


You're All I Ever Loved (So Come On And Hate Me)

by Serafaerosa



Series: Head Vs. Heart [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alpha!Clarke, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Angry Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clexa, Eventual Romance, F/F, G!P Clarke, Hate Sex, Knotting, Magic Cock, Mating Cycles/In Heat, More angst, Omega Verse, Omega!Lexa, PWP, Pregnancy, Temporary Character Death, a little eventual fluff, sort of but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-04-18 08:17:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 61,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4698842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serafaerosa/pseuds/Serafaerosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post season 2: Lexa is in heat, and Clarke is the only alpha that will satisfy her. Again, and again, and again.</p><p>or</p><p>Clarke keeps making decisions with her head (pun intended), until she realizes her heart was wiser.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at Omegaverse. Be kind. Alphas and Omegas have more control in this depiction, but only because sometimes, having control is worse than losing it. 
> 
> This started off as a one-shot and evolved because Clexa. I am such trash.

It has been months since the last time they'd seen each other. Months since Lexa left her standing at the foot of Mount Weather, without her promised army, without her support, without anything but a burning in her gut and behind her eyes and an empty _ache_ in her chest that, even until now, hasn't gone away. It has been months since she pulled that lever, with Bellamy’s warm, rough hand over hers, and watched as bodies – old, young, innocent, guilty – doubled over in pain, screaming and shrieking in agony while their skin erupted in radiation burns and the life seeped out of them through angry red pores.

It has been months. And Clarke’s not sure she’s ready to face the Commander again. Not yet, maybe not ever.

But in those months, even during Clarke’s long absence, Lexa and the Trikru have made great efforts to assist Clarke’s people in surviving the harsh winter. They sent heavy furs, meat, grain, fruit, vegetables, wood. Despite suspicions and stares colder than the storms swirling white outside. Despite the burning anger and resentment that greeted them at the end of every trip. Despite knowing that, by turning away and abandoning Clarke and all the Arkers trapped inside the mountain, they had annihilated every last tenuous shred of the alliance between them, and all that kept the Arkers from declaring open war on the Trikru was the plain and simple understanding that it would be the last thing they ever did, and the bloody sacrifice Clarke had made to ensure their survival would have been in vain.

Clarke knew. They had told her in the village of the Boat People, where Clarke had found herself after days, nearly a week’s worth, of starving and walking and searching for some kind of peace. Luna had given her the news herself, told her in quiet, calculated tones that, although Lexa had forsaken her at the mountain, she had returned to look after her people.

Clarke tried to forgive her. She’s still trying. Some days, it’s easier. But most days, it feels impossible, and the best Clarke can manage is a low, burning resentment and hatred and _hurt_ for what Lexa had done.

And some days, rare days, Clarke remembers the sparkle of salt gliding down Lexa’s bloodied cheeks, and the hitch in her voice when she said goodbye.

Today is not one of those days.

It hardly matters. Clarke returned a week ago to Camp Jaha to find it in better condition than she had expected. She returned to find her people hale and healthy, strong and working in fields plowed and sown with seeds gifted to them by Lexa’s unfailing weekly caravans of supplies. There are ghosts in their eyes, ghosts that echo the ones in Clarke’s soul, but theirs are far away, ignored in favor of hard toil in soft earth that will yield them a harvest of their own for the summer, fall, and coming winter.

Because they were not the ones to pull the lever, their ghosts can be ignored, in ways that Clarke’s cannot, will not.

But as immediate and unrelenting as her ghosts are, Clarke knows she cannot stay away long, cannot ignore her duties too long. She made a commitment the day she led Emerson through the labyrinth of the broken Ark with a large unit of grounders flanked at her sides, and made her declaration of leadership to the Chancellor, her mother, and to the whole of Camp Jaha.

And the time has come to take up her mantle again. The time has come to renew the old alliance between ground and sky, to ensure her people’s further survival, to put everyone else ahead of herself. Again.

Clarke hesitates in front of Lexa’s tent. Lexa has been in Polis throughout the winter, and Clarke is not the only Arker who has seen neither hide nor hair of her since the day she walked away. But now Lexa is in TonDC, a day’s ride from Camp Jaha, here to renew the alliance, just the same as Clarke. Clarke doesn't want to go in, but the pull to push the tent flap open and walk inside is almost unbearable. Her belly clenches, her memories trip back in time to Lexa’s mouth on hers, to Lexa’s sweet scent invading her nostrils, to Lexa’s impassive face, shrouded in blood and war paint and darkness, as she walked away from her for the last time.

Clarke steels herself, stiffens her shoulders, and pushes inside.

It is as dark and stuffy inside Lexa’s tent as it ever was. Though it is still spring, the heat is already unbearable, sticky and heavy as if promising rain, though the rain never seems to come. It takes a moment for Clarke’s vision to adjust, and when it does, it is almost as if no time has passed since the last time Clarke was here.

Papers are strewn across a massive desk in the middle of the tent. Chairs are littered around it, equipment crowding the narrow spaces though this time they are tools of farming, growing, hunting, rather than tools of war. A heavy curtain hides the narrow bed Clarke knows is at the back of the tent, and there is movement behind it, a soft panting, and a scent that is Lexa… but somehow richer, fuller, more intense. A muscle in Clarke’s jaw jumps, her belly twists again, and heat flushes deep in her thighs. Lexa knows she’s coming today, that their first of many meetings was meant to start nearly ten minutes ago. She should have been waiting, but instead –

A soft gasp reaches Clarke’s ears and she tenses, one hand on the gun holstered again at her side, the other hovering uncertainly over the tent flap behind her. “Lexa?” Clarke ventures, voice steadier than she feels, and forces herself to take a step further inside, blue eyes fastened on the curtain swaying opposite her.

Silence. Movement ripples, and Clarke’s hand drops from behind her, though the gun’s rough grip bites into her clenched palm. Then Lexa emerges, alone, skin glowing with a fresh layer of sweat and her green eyes burning. The smell hits Clarke hard, and Clarke has to close her eyes, swallow hard, and focus to ignore the twinge in her gut and the heat rising in her cheeks.

“Clarke.”

It is a statement. Lexa’s voice is low, husky, and Clarke forces herself to release her tight hold on the gun in her hand. Relaxing is impossible like this, so Clarke settles for a stiff stance, feet shoulder-length apart and hands clasped in front of her, where pressure begins to grow between her legs.

“You are early,” Lexa pushes away from her bed, allowing the curtain to fall shut behind her. Even from across the wide expanse of the tent, Clarke can smell the thick smokiness on Lexa’s fingers, and the humid stuffiness of their surroundings only makes it worse.

Clarke swallows again, hard, before opening her eyes to fix them on the woman staring hungrily at her from many feet away. “No,” she answers slowly, voice taking on a soft growl she can't suppress, “I'm not.”

Lexa only answers with a soft ‘oh’ and a shuffle of feet.

This is not the Commander Clarke remembers. She is still expressionless, stone-faced. But she seems strangely hesitant, unsure, and Clarke wonders if she is remembering, too, their last minutes together months ago. Clarke wonders if she remembers the taste of her lips. If it was Clarke she thought of behind the curtain moments ago, and if it was Clarke's name on her tongue, unspoken but formed, while Clarke listened on the other side. Clarke wonders that she never considered the possibility of Lexa going into heat, that the potential had never occurred to her, despite knowing the Commander is an omega.

She is clearly in heat now. Clarke wonders if this is how Lexa deals with all her heats, by masturbating while she waits for her next meeting to start. She wonders if other leaders have caught her before, or if Clarke is the first. She wonders if Lexa did this on purpose, because Lexa is not the type of person to be caught off-guard in this way, and if this is somehow payback for Clarke pulling away last fall, when Lexa bared her soul to her and kissed her. She wonders if Lexa took so long masturbating because she knew Clarke was coming, and somehow, that knowledge had made her heat too insistent to ignore.

“Maybe I should come back later,” Clarke finally clears her throat, breaking eye-contact with the slowly approaching omega, “when your heat is over.”

“Why?” Lexa returns immediately, voice sharp and familiar and tipped with only the faintest traces of the arousal and need Clarke can smell rushing in her veins at that moment. “Is my heat a problem for you, Clarke?”

Clarke grits her teeth. She wants, desperately, to say no. She wants to spit at Lexa’s feet and deny the answering arousal flooding her groin, wants to cross her arms over her chest and stare blandly at Lexa, while Lexa stares back with a full understanding of how much she does _not_ affect her. But she does, and a hard swell is already beginning to pull at the front of her pants.

Lexa licks her lips and clears her throat, obvious understanding in those damned green eyes. “You are not a child, Clarke.”

There is a challenge and an admonishment in Lexa’s words. Clarke knows she can control her arousal, but that is not the issue. The issue is the arousal itself. That Clarke can feel a draw to Lexa at all disgusts her completely.

“Or are you implying that it is I who lacks control?” the glint in Lexa’s eyes gives away that she is teasing. Anger surges through Clarke, though she knows by Lexa’s hard, sudden blink, the flirtatious suggestion was unintentional. A soft, deep growl vibrates through Clarke’s lungs, spilling from her lips like a distant roll of thunder. “I apologize,” Lexa says immediately, eyes still closed and her hand sweeping to the chair in front of her, “I did not intend it the way it sounded.”

Lexa begins her approach again, steps slow and careful. Clarke stands still, feet rooted to the floor and shoulders stiff, eyes drinking in every detail. There are bags under Lexa’s eyes, a sadness in the dappled green of her irises that Clarke is surprised, shocked, to see, and her shoulders seem heavy and weighted.

“Stay, Clarke,” the way Lexa pronounces her name sends an involuntary shiver down Clarke’s back, “the alliance demands it.”

So Clarke stays. She doesn't comment that the alliance needed Lexa to stay months ago on the mountain. It is pointless, a moot argument, because Lexa didn’t stay, and there is nothing either of them can do to change this fact. And Clarke knows there is nothing Lexa would do, even if she could, to change it.

And despite the anger and betrayal swirling in Clarke’s belly, she flinches every time Lexa says her name, skin shivering at the hardness of Lexa’s tongue over the consonants. Sweat rolls down her back from the stifling heat of the tent, and the intensity of Lexa’s scent drives Clarke to tie the flaps open, despite the coy smirk curled at the corners of Lexa’s lips and the understanding in Lexa’s stoic gaze. The humidity is an excuse. They both know it. But Clarke is not ready to admit it, not yet.

They do not talk about what happened at the mountain. They do not talk about either kiss or betrayal. Instead, they solidify the already agreed-upon parameters of the new alliance, nitpick over details, argue for the sake of arguing because the push and pull of negotiation is a powerful distraction, and neither of them want Clarke to leave, and neither of them are willing to admit it. It is dusk by the time Clarke finally does leave, head pounding, mouth dry, throat sore, body _aching_ , to return to her own tent on the outskirts of the village. Tomorrow, the agreement will be made public, the alliance made official, and the Arkers – now the Sky People – will be welcomed as the thirteenth clan in Lexa’s Coalition.

Sleep does not come to Clarke easily that night. She strips hurriedly in the privacy of her own small tent once the flaps are closed, the thick humidity of the unventilated space uncomfortable but unavoidable if she wants to sleep bare in her skin. Her nose is still full of Lexa, her skin still tingling with Lexa’s heat, and Clarke cannot seem to rid herself of Lexa’s scent. It is everywhere, in her clothes, in her hair, in her skin, pungent and inescapable. She throws herself on top of her furs, too hot to slide under despite the decided coolness of the evening, and pulls her hair out from under her head to fan across the pillow. Strands, soaked in Lexa’s pheromones, cling to her damp neck, and Clarke can't help but cup herself and sigh at the wetness gathering on her fingertips.

At least it had gone no further than this. She swipes her fingers through her folds idly, her thumb brushes against her stiff, swollen clitoris, and she’s grateful it did not swell and grow, but it aches, it throbs and Clarke wonders if it would be less uncomfortable if it had. She wonders if it would be less uncomfortable for her if she satisfies her needs right now with her own hand, then promptly shoves the thought away and rolls over onto her side.

Lexa abandoned her, betrayed her, walked away when Clarke needed her most, and Clarke _hates_ her. She wills the arousal rushing in her veins to disappear, closes her eyes, and tries to force herself to sleep.

In the end, she knows she can't, and fucks herself on her fingers while angry tears slide down her cheeks, burning against her skin.

 

 

* * *

 

  

If the past few days have been difficult for Clarke, they have been unbearable for Leksa.

Her heat should have ended two days ago. But it is as if her body knows, as if it demands a specific, perverse craving to be sated and will not fade until it is. All through the negotiations, Leksa’s skin burns with need for the blonde arguing adamantly, pointlessly, with her. All through the ceremony welcoming the Skaikru into the Coalition, Leksa bathes in Clarke’s scent, stomach twisting itself into knots and skin shivering, burning for the alpha standing beside her. All through the ensuing celebrations, night after night, Leksa has been forced to endure close proximity with the only alpha she wants to satisfy her heat, and the only alpha she knows will refuse her. And now, nearly a week after the first time Leksa is caught masturbating by Clarke, the first time in many months since Leksa had left her standing alone in the mountain’s hulking shadow, Leksa is hollow, aching, desperate, for a release from this unbearable heat.

None of her heat cycles have ever lasted this long, or been this difficult to manage. Leksa pushes her underwear off for better access to herself, shoving the furs on her bed out of the way in the process. It is nearly dawn, and in a few moments, Indra will be striding into her tent with updates, news, and impatience for their ritual morning spar. And though Leksa is sore from fucking herself in every spare minute she has had since Clarke’s return, she is desperate to soothe this never ending ache, even if only slightly, even if only for a few minutes.

Her fingers glide through the constant wetness between her folds, blunt nails scraping angrily over skin red and swollen with overstimulation. A pulse of heat greets her fingertips, and Leksa gasps as Clarke’s blue ocean eyes flicker into view. Her skin tingles at the small of her back as Leksa remembers the warm pressure of Clarke’s hands there months ago, the first and last time they'd kissed. She plunges two fingers in immediately, biting back a whine and bucking her hips up into her hand. She wishes it was Clarke she was jerking her hips up into. But it’s not, and Leksa has to pretend, again, that she feels Clarke’s breath ghosting against her cheek, that she hears Clarke’s voice in her ear, whispering for her to come, because her body and heart demand it, and her mind cannot help but supply it.

Leksa comes with a sob strangled in her throat. Three fingers push deep into her, wet heat spilling between them and onto the rough cotton blankets beneath her. She rolls onto her side, hand trapped between her thighs, and buries her face into her pillow. Right now, she is not the Commander. She cannot be the Commander. Right now, she is weak, and she knows it, because her alpha is across the village from her, sleeping soundly in her own tent and ignoring the call of pheromones Leksa knows she’s giving off in heavy waves.

 

When Indra enters the tent, Leksa knows she can smell the heat still coursing through her veins. The alpha stiffens at the tantalizing scent, gives Leksa a hard stare, and settles one hand on the hilt of her sword. Leksa doesn't miss the slight swell stiffening at the front of Indra's pants, but she ignores it.

“Still, Heda?” Indra all but growls, dark eyes examining Leksa where she stands, dressed and stone-faced as ever. Leksa growls back, but doesn’t answer. “It has been a week. The other Alphas grow restless.” There is accusation in Indra’s cold voice, and almost an order - _take an Alpha, if you must, and be done with it_ \- and Leksa’s upper lip lifts into a snarl. As if any Alpha other than Clarke will satisfy her. As if Leksa has any control over the situation. It is the only situation Leksa never has, and never will, have control over.

“My heat is none of your business, or theirs,” Leksa hisses, green eyes glittering and hard in the dimness of her tent, and is satisfied when Indra gives her a stiff nod in acknowledgement.

Leksa gives up that night. Her body is not the only part of her making these demands, and her mind is breaking under the strain of them. For the first time in years, Indra has managed to trip her and trap her to the ground, and for the first time in years, Leksa is not at the top of her game. For the first time in years, Leksa is not fit to be the Commander of the Coalition, and for the first time in years, the Commander Spirit within her feels incomplete and not whole.

The trip to Clarke’s tent is silent. She flits from shadow to shadow, clad in light leathers and sweating profusely under the layers, struggling not to pant as her heat burns her from the inside out. Fear sweeps through her again, that Clarke will refuse her, turn her away, commit her to a lifetime of inconsolable heats and an emptiness in her whole body she knows will not fade when her heat eventually, reluctantly does. She needs this, and Leksa thinks she’s willing to beg, even if it’s just for the one night.

She knows Clarke senses her the instant Leksa slides between her tent flaps. A body stiffens on the bed, and a flood of alpha pheromones rushes over Leksa, almost powerful enough to physically knock her over. Leksa stares at the figure tensed and poised for what Leksa initially mistakes as flight on the narrow bunk, her own body tensed in return, eyes drinking in the expanse of smooth, pale skin glowing with sweat in the thin, weak moonlight that dances in between the narrow gap in the tent’s flaps. Leksa licks her lips, the pounding, hollow ache in her gut intensifying maddeningly at the sight that greets her.

Clarke is stretched across the bed, one hand cupped between her thighs, legs bare and bent over the furs. She is still wearing her top, but the hem has ridden up over her hips, revealing a smooth, hard stomach dotted with sparkling moisture. Clarke’s face is flushed, and anger and arousal swirl dangerously in her blown eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Clarke’s whisper is harsh, rough with the growl Leksa wishes she could taste on her lips. But Clarke’s fingers are still moving, and her back arches off the bed as a wave of furious pleasure sweeps through her. Leksa feels an answering sweep wash over her, and more wetness pulses between her own legs, ruining yet another pair of underwear. Leksa swallows around the hard lump in her throat, and forces her feet to move, to pull her the rest of the way inside. Clarke’s scent closes around her, thick and heady and musky, and Leksa can’t stop the whimper shivering in her throat.

It makes Clarke arch again, makes her eyes flutter shut and her jaw clench as orgasm sweeps through her. Leksa watches intently, mouth dry, as something swells against the palm of Clarke’s hand, the beginning of an erection Leksa has been waiting to see for almost a week and Clarke has been dreading for just as long. “Get out,” Clarke snaps, voice broken and strained, but Leksa doesn’t move, only stares while Clarke snatches at her pants beside the bed and yanks them on.

“No, Clarke,” Leksa finally manages to find her voice, but it comes out strangled and alien, “not this time.”

The words are like a slap to the face, and Leksa flinches as she realizes what she has just said, and the implications of her words. The snarl twisting Clarke’s mouth is both tempting and terrifying.

“Oh,” Clarke spits back, “so now that it’s you who needs something, you can stick around? How convenient.”

Leksa almost withdraws, stung by the poison in Clarke’s words, but staying this time is necessary. For both of them. She takes a deep breath, forces herself to meet the burning blue of Clarke’s gaze, and takes another step into Clarke’s tent. “No,” she repeats, “my heat is impeding my ability to lead. This affects us both now, Clarke,” satisfaction curls in Leksa’s gut to see the way Clarke’s throat bobs in a hard swallow in reaction to the way Leksa says her name, “We are allies. You are a leader under _my_ Coalition.”

This sounds almost worse than Leksa’s last statement. Clarke’s eyes widen, and Leksa can see the shake of her shoulders as she growls. She can also see the growing bulge tenting at the front of Clarke’s unbuttoned pants. Heat floods in her veins.

“So, what,” Clarke growls, and the vibrations of it seem to shiver in Leksa’s skin, “now you own me, is that it? You get to fuck me whenever the mood hits?”

“No,” Leksa repeats again, the word a whisper brushing against Clarke’s skin as Leksa presses in, slicing through the few feet between them on shaking but determined legs, “I’m asking you to fuck _me_ , so this torture can end.” She cups the hard swell straining against the fabric of Clarke’s pants, bends to press her lips to Clarke’s fevered skin, and is ashamed of how delighted she is to feel it shiver under her touch. “Once, Clarke. Get it over with. Then we can both rest easy.” The powerful scent of alpha soaks through her clothes, and Leksa knows if she is turned away and forced to return to her tent alone and unsatisfied, she may very well cry for the first time since Kostia died. Her heat has never been this bad, never been anything more than a minor annoyance. Now, it is a driving force, and Leksa can no longer think past blonde hair and infinitely blue eyes and a raspy voice that once begged her to stay and is now commanding her to go. Her heart and body know that Clarke is her alpha, even if Clarke’s teeth have never marked her, even though Clarke has never claimed her. Even her mind is resigned to this fact.

Clarke shoves her roughly away, flipping Leksa onto the bed even as she scrambles out of it. Her nostrils flare, eyes glinting in the darkness that weighs heavy over them, and Leksa can hear her panting harshly through her mouth. Her hands are clenched at her sides, and Leksa aches to reach for them, smooth them open with her own and kiss their palms. “Fine,” Clarke grudgingly agrees, “once. For my sake, not yours.”

The words hurt just a little more than they allay. But Clarke doesn't give Leksa the chance to examine why. Instead, Leksa is mesmerized as Clarke shoves her pants back off in a single, choppy motion, exposing her hard, throbbing erection, and shoves Leksa back into the bed only to yank down Leksa’s pants too. Leksa wraps her arms around Clarke’s strong shoulders, lifts herself off the bed to help Clarke and whimpers as cool air hits flushed skin. She wishes Clarke would take all their clothes off. She wishes Clarke would wrap her arms around her, kiss her again like she did in her tent months ago, make love to her the way Leksa has been pretending she does every night for a little under a week now.

Hard fingers part Leksa’s knees, and a heavy weight settles between them. Leksa whimpers again to feel Clarke’s shaft press into the inside of her thigh. A drop of wetness beads against her skin, Clarke’s this time instead of hers, and a rush of arousal floods her belly and pours out of her. Immediately, Leksa winds her legs around Clarke’s hips, pulling her down, closer. Arms settle on either side of Leksa, not holding her, only straddling her, and Clarke’s tip pushes against Leksa’s slick folds.

A moan tears the air between them, and it is unclear whose lips it left. Leksa digs her fingers into Clarke’s sweat-soaked hair and tugs her down hard, their mouths meet in a rough, angry kiss, teeth clashing and tongues whipping against each other, and then Clarke thrusts.

Her cock pushes into Leksa’s entrance with almost bruising force, but it feels good, and a hard gust of air breaks from Leksa’s mouth against Clarke’s cheek. The ache inside her multiplies, her heels press against the backs of Clarke’s thighs in an attempt to force more of Clarke in, to fill the almost painful emptiness that has taken up residence in Leksa’s core, and a few more inches slide in, splitting Leksa open and making her whine pitifully in gratitude. Clarke grunts in relief, her hips buck hard into her, forcing yet another few inches in. Her mouth trails down Leksa’s cheek, teeth nipping sharply at flushed skin down to her neck and Leksa notes with intense, gut-wrenching disappointment that Clarke is careful not to bite over her pulse point. A tongue scrapes maddeningly over her throat and Leksa can taste salt on her lips, where they meet the nape of Clarke’s neck. Clarke slides in to the hilt, carried by a heavy pulse of wetness pounding from Leksa’s core to her entrance.

It is something else completely. Leksa can’t breathe for the sudden, heady rush of emotion and sensation that overwhelm her. Her legs tighten around Clarke, and the layers of clothing between them feel suddenly like far too much distance. She is full of hard, pulsing Alpha, writhing and mewling beneath the alpha that refuses to claim her and be claimed by her. Salt stings in Leksa’s eyes, her throat closes, and as Clarke moves in her, Leksa’s arms tighten around her alpha, pleading for forgiveness and for love in a way Leksa knows she will never manage with words. The desperate, hollow ache of her heat is already evolving into the desperate, hollow ache of a heart split in two. Leksa buries her face in Clarke’s shoulder, nips pleadingly at her pulse point, and arches hard into Clarke, knowing the alpha will understand her request.

Clarke’s arms tighten around her; hard, calloused fingers find Leksa’s neck and dig in. The rough pressure alone is a refusal, a denial, but Clarke thrusts in hard, and Leksa feels Clarke's moan growling into her, chest to chest. Leksa can feel a knot too, beginning to swell at the base of Clarke’s cock. She wants it inside her, but she knows it never will be.

“Fuck!” The harsh whisper burns against Leksa’s skin, where neck meets shoulder, and teeth nip at the space above her pulse point when Clarke thrusts again sharply. Her alpha is heavy over her, but Leksa rolls her hips into every push, arches into the woman she aches to mate, and she can feel Clarke’s chest swell and deflate with the way each writhing movement affects her. She can feel the way Clarke twitches and pounds inside her. Release inches into view, and Leksa groans at the way Clarke grinds into her, as if searching for it, as if trying to draw it out.

“Fuck me, Clarke,” Leksa pants out, voice low and raspy and _pleading_ against Clarke’s ear, and is instantly rewarded by the tremble of Clarke’s arms around her, by the shiver of her skin, by the hard twitch of Clarke’s shaft splitting her open and the sudden pulse and rush of an orgasm she knows is just within Clarke’s grasping reach. Leksa can feel her walls tightening around Clarke, and need and pleasure press maddeningly around her, drawing another harsh pant and moan from her lips that is answered immediately in the crush of Clarke’s chest against hers. “Fuck me,” Leksa tries again, and grinds up as Clarke grinds down in a desperate, nearly violent attempt to merge and fuse. Clarke’s knot presses hard against her soaked entrance and Leksa has to bite her own lip hard enough to draw blood not to scream in pleasure. She wants it, so badly. Clarke’s cock pulses violently, and then Clarke loses control.

Somehow, Leksa’s obscene demand has the power to completely undo the alpha from tip to base. She pounds relentlessly into Leksa, her thrusts so hard and sharp it’s almost painful. Leksa swallows a scream, yanks Clarke’s face around to crush their mouths together, and the coppery taste of blood mixing with the salt of sweat is almost enough to push her into orgasm right then and there. But Leksa holds back, desperately, in an attempt to stretch out this excruciatingly delicious experience for as long as possible. It’s the only chance she'll get to feel Clarke’s raw power working her over. It’s the only chance she'll get to hold Clarke in her arms and kiss her; the only chance she'll get to love her.

Clarke slams into her over and over, both of their chests are heaving with suppressed cries of pleasure, and rough, gravelly moans travel between their sealed mouths. Clarke pulls herself to her knees, and Leksa clings on, powerful legs wrapped so tight and so firm over Clarke’s hips that she hangs from Clarke’s body and sways as Clarke plunges in and out of her. Clarke tears her mouth from Leksa’s, and the growl that shivers between their lips sends an echoing shiver running in the slickness now sliding down the creases between Leksa’s thighs. “Say it again,” Clarke demands, her voice deep and rough and raspy with intense arousal.

Leksa throws her head back, exposing her neck to Clarke, and whimpers. She’s hanging from Clarke’s shoulders, her whole body lifted off the bed while Clarke fucks into her, and Clarke’s muscles flex intoxicatingly under her skin. “Say it again!” Clarke barks, and Leksa can feel Clarke’s pumping cock straining inside her, splitting her wide open and ready to explode.

“Fuck me, Clarke!”

In a single, swift movement, Clarke lifts herself completely off the bed and settles back on her legs. Orgasm rips through the alpha, and Leksa shudders to feel it bursting inside. She yelps into Clarke’s shoulder as Clarke’s arms wrap hard and tight around her back, holding her down, crushing their hips together and pulsing hard streams of come deep inside. Clarke’s come soaks her, fills her completely, and the hard shots pounding into her finally rip her into a shuddering orgasm of her own.

It’s beautiful, exquisite, wonderful, the best moment of Leksa’s tumultuous, tortured existence. But it’s also excruciatingly painful, as Leksa is filled to overflowing in an instant, and she feels their combined release flood past her entrance and soak the knot she knows Clarke is holding back just behind the tight ring of muscle around her entrance. Relief and delicious release wash through Leksa, and Clarke is panting hard against her, fingers digging into skin through layers of cloth and leather and Leksa wishes again that the miles of clothing between them would simply vanish. Their mixed come floods in pulsing waves over Clarke’s hips and thighs, and Leksa trembles in her alpha’s arms, desperate to feel teeth dig into her flesh, aching with a different kind of hollowness than before.

She nips again at Clarke’s pulse point, a soft, shamefully plaintive whimper cutting the thick air between them. Clarke’s teeth scrape against her sweat-slicked skin, close over her pulse point, and for a heartbreaking moment, Leksa thinks maybe, _maybe_ Clarke will bite. _Maybe_ Clarke will mate her, claim her, at last. But Leksa’s intense release begins to fade into aftershocks, and the last, weak pulses of Clarke’s orgasm taper, even after a large handful of long silent moments holding each other like this, and Clarke’s teeth give no more than a slight, prickling pressure over her burning skin.

Clarke is still hard and erect when she finally pushes Leksa off and slides out. The shaft gleams in the pregnant darkness with their combined orgasms. Blue eyes bore into hers, and Leksa knows she will cry tonight for the first time since Kostia died.

“Done?” Clarke asks, her voice hard and choked in the heavy stillness between them. Reluctantly, Leksa nods. Her heat is over, satiated by Clarke’s unforgiving fuck. But the hollowness in Leksa’s chest has only grown deeper and more painfully jagged. “Good,” Clarke grunts, and bends to pick up Leksa’s pants only to throw them spitefully at her, “then get out.”

Leksa allows herself to be weak for a little bit longer in the privacy of her own tent. She strips completely, drops her clothes in a pile at the foot of her bed and collapses into it as painful sobs rip through her chest and break on her lips. Tears flood her cheeks, and she pushes her fingers into the soreness between her legs, gathering the mingling remnants of the orgasm she just shared with the woman who should be her mate. Clarke’s scent clings to her skin, and swells in Leksa’s nose as she lifts her soaked fingers to her face and licks them.

The taste isn't pure, but it’s in their combined flavors that Leksa finds the most comfort. She thinks Clarke must taste like heat and buttercups and sunlight, the way Leksa thinks she tastes like darkness and soil. She sucks as much of it off her fingers as she can, before sliding her fingers down her belly and past the tired, aching ring of muscle at her entrance. She pretends Clarke is there, pretends she can still feel Clarke’s hot weight over her, that she can still hear Clarke’s growling moans of pleasure in her ear and taste Clarke’s sweat on her tongue. She pretends that the blunt nails she digs into the base of her neck, where her broken heart beats against her skin, are Clarke’s teeth, biting hard enough and deep enough to draw blood. Her teeth clench and grind, she pounds three fingers into herself and arches off the bed, teeth snapping at empty air in a futile, desperate attempt to claim and mate her alpha.

When the last, weak aftershocks of her self-induced orgasm fade, Lexa flips onto her side, cocoons herself in her furs, and cries herself to sleep. Her heat is gone the next morning, but the ache to curl up in Clarke’s arms, to kiss her skin and breathe her in is stronger than it has ever been.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Right after Lexa leaves, pants soaking through almost immediately with the gush of their combined orgasms still flooding out between Lexa’s thighs, Clarke tries to settle back into bed to sleep. But Lexa’s scent is everywhere, on her skin, in her hair, buried deep in the sheets and thin mattress of Clarke’s bed. Her erection will not soften alone, and Clarke pumps her hand over the slick stickiness, fingers squeezing to get the last drops out, though there are none left. She presses the edge of her fist over her knot, clenches it, closes her eyes and fights her nausea as she pretends it is the hard ring of muscle around Lexa’s entrance closing over it. It is thoughts of the Commander, mewling in her arms, panting and writhing and _hers_ that finally brings Clarke enough release for her erection to go limp then shrink back into a swollen bud.

And Clarke can’t sleep in her own bed.

Instead, she drops to the packed dirt floor, dragging her cleanest sheet down under her to lay on. She tears off her shirt, cups her fingers over her mound, and clenches her teeth, still reeling from the innate desire, the raw instinct to dig her teeth into Lexa’s neck and mate her. Lexa is _her_  omega. If the truth wasn't clear to her before, it is clear to her now, and Clarke hates herself almost as much as she hates Lexa for it.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I was not expecting this story to get such a warm, enthusiastic reception. Thank you all so much for your kudos and your kind comments, every single one made my day. <3 
> 
> To answer Kamloth's question: yes, I will have an update schedule. You can look for new chapters on Mondays and Thursdays.

Clarke leaves TonDC two days after Lexa visited her tent. She is both relieved and anxious to put a significant amount of distance between her and the omega, though she knows Lexa’s heat ended when Clarke emptied herself into her.

She cannot decide if fucking Lexa was exactly what she needed, or one of the biggest mistakes of her life.

So she is both glad and depressed as she digs her heels into her horse’s sides and clucks at it, pulling the reins around to ride away from TonDC and in the direction of Camp Jaha. Beside her, Abby stares, catching the still mingled scents of Clarke and Lexa. But to Clarke’s gratitude, her mother says nothing.

And to Clarke’s extreme surprise, Lexa does not leave TonDC.

Months pass, the rebuilding in the shattered village may take years to complete, and though Lexa’s presence is not necessary, Lexa stays. Clarke hears all of this from the scouts and messengers that pass weekly in and out of the Sky People’s camp, teaching Clarke’s people how to make weapons, track and hunt game, and fight with hands and feet and swords. Spring passes into summer, Clarke’s whole body and heart still ache for Lexa as if she is the one in heat, though she wills her mind to ignore it, to never give in. Eventually, Lexa’s scent fades from her skin, and Clarke’s involuntary but desperate desire to hold Lexa in her arms again fades with it.

Summer slips into fall. Clarke stops asking if Lexa has left for Polis yet, but the news still trickles in: she refuses to live in the new outcrop of buildings built for the homeless on the outskirts, and stays in her tent instead. She has won a new scar, from hip to ankle, where old world steel bit into her flesh while she helped clear away rubble for new foundations. She helps train the seconds in the morning, sparring with them as seriously as she spars with Indra, and praises them as frequently as she corrects and scolds them. What love and loyalty Lexa lost by abandoning Clarke on the mountain, she begins to win back by supporting and aiding her people despite their old, dying resentment.

Despite herself, Clarke wonders if Lexa ever thinks of her, misses her, wishes she were there. Despite herself, when the ache is at its deepest, Clarke finds herself burying her face into her pillow, searching for any lingering remnants of Lexa’s scent, deposited there by Clarke’s own skin in the days since leaving TonDC two seasons ago. She hates herself for caring. She hates Lexa for making her care.

Camp Jaha thrives. And as fall’s bounty is harvested and stored, as the summer’s dead leaves crunch into dust underfoot and autumn eventually gives way to bitter winter, Clarke expects Lexa to have returned, finally, to Polis and home.

Instead, deep in winter, Clarke gets a message, delivered by an exhausted, frost-bitten runner on horseback in the dead of night, requesting Clarke’s immediate and solitary presence in TonDC as soon as humanly possible. When Clarke demands to know why, the scout only shrugs obliquely at her and slips into grateful sleep buried deep in warm furs.

They have long since learned to trust the alliance and the Coalition, if not Lexa personally. Clarke cannot begin to guess why her presence in TonDC is required, and why she is to go alone, but there's no fear that she will be ambushed and killed. Her horse is ready by dawn, coat shaggy and covered in a fine layer of icy snow. Clarke lumbers onto it, covered up to her eyeballs in warm furs gifted to her by the scout himself to help her in her day-long trip to TonDC. Her mother warns her to be careful, Bellamy eyeballs her and gives her a one-armed hug. Raven frowns and tells her to come home soon. All of them can guess the reason for Clarke’s requested, urgent arrival in the nearby grounder village, all of them caught Lexa’s scent in Clarke’s on the trip home from TonDC a little over ten months ago. None of them, Clarke included, allow evidence of their thoughts to pass their lips.

Clarke pretends she isn’t hoping Lexa has gone into heat again. She pretends she isn’t hoping Lexa needs her to satisfy it if she has. She pretends she isn’t hoping that she is the _only_ alpha who can ever satisfy her heats.

Though she arrives in TonDC exhausted and well after the sun has set, she is ushered to Lexa’s tiny, unfinished hut almost immediately. It is Nyko who helps her off her horse just outside it and rubs her arms to get the warmth and feeling back into them, joking under his solidifying breath that once she enters Heda’s hut, they will grow hot with or without the added circulation. Hope and anger together surge in Clarke’s chest. It is too cold and too wet for Clarke to catch any scent at all in the air.

Lexa’s hut, however, is a different matter entirely.

It is only one room, smaller than her tent, and draftier. Clarke knows Lexa would only have accepted it after much wheedling and begging from TonDC’s population, only after all the rest of her people were housed and comfortable, and that she would have accepted it graciously. Clarke still hates Lexa, but the men and women she sends with extra supplies and training to Camp Jaha speak of Lexa with the same loyalty and respect they used to have before the mountain. And even without that, Clarke knows Lexa loves her people, and knows she has the capability to be kind to them.

Inside, the same sturdy table from Lexa’s tent is arranged almost haphazardly in the middle of the room. And just like Lexa’s tent, a curtain partitions the bed at the very back. It is hot inside, and Clarke immediately strips her heavy furs down to her thin cotton shorts and tank top. It’s not just the heat from the fire crackling in the hearth just beyond the table, Clarke can smell Lexa’s heat permeating the walls. She thinks it will never come out, even years after Lexa has left this house.

A strong, tanned hand pushes the curtain aside. Lexa is in underwear and a thin, frayed top, her skin aglow with sweat and her face heavily flushed. Her green eyes are gleaming in the crackling orange firelight, and though Clarke can see her muscles straining to reach her, she remains glued in place. A new pink scar stretches down her left leg, the top hidden beneath the grey fabric of her underwear against her hip, and runs down past her calf. A pleasant, if unwanted, pressure flickers and throbs in Clarke's core. She can feel her clit already begin to swell at the tempting sight of Lexa only half-dressed and reeking of heat and want and need.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Clarke growls, though this is only the second time, “my people need me in Camp Jaha, and I’m not your little fuck-toy to call over whenever you’re in heat.” A searing ache coils in the pit of Clarke’s twisting stomach. Wetness slides down the inside of her thigh, just underneath the loose fabric of her shorts. Her whole body is straining for Lexa, despite Clarke’s reticence to bed the Commander again, just as Lexa’s body is straining toward Clarke.

Lexa does not answer. But her eyes rake over every inch of Clarke’s skin greedily, pupils blown with uncontained lust. Clarke can see a muscle twitching in Lexa’s cheek.

“How long?” Clarke snaps finally, when the heavy silence between them gets to be too much. Her skin is burning, and her fingers are twitching at her sides.

The Commander’s eyes flick up to meet her own, and there is a deep, hollow sadness in them that Clarke remembers from months ago, when she first strode into Lexa’s tent and discovered that Lexa was in heat. This time, it is intensified, and it makes Clarke shiver.

“Ten days,” Lexa’s voice is a rough, raspy gasp. Clarke notices the damp patch spread between the apex of her thighs and the tremble in Lexa’s unsteady legs. She bites the inside of her cheek, pleased and horrified both at how long Lexa has been suffering through this heat alone. Arousal slices through Clarke's belly at the wanton expression painted into Lexa's features, and the rising swell of her clit growing into a full erection twitches against her suddenly confining shorts. 

“I’m sure you have other alphas in TonDC to take care of your needs,” Clarke snaps, arms finally crossing over her chest defensively, petulantly. But Lexa only shakes her head at her and lets out a whimpering sigh.

“They are not _my_ alpha,” Lexa chokes out, clearly desperate, “they cannot help me.”

For the first time, Clarke notices that the skin around Lexa’s eyes are puffy and red. And for the first time, she notices that Lexa’s scent is different, that faint notes of another alpha’s musk pervade her smoky, woodsy smell. Clarke growls softly, irrationally jealous and angry that someone else has dared to touch _her_ omega, but the expression loses its bite quickly and sounds like more of an expression of desire than anything else. “I’m not your fuck-toy, Commander.”

Lexa takes a stumbling step toward her, and Clarke’s skin crawls. Heat and pressure gather tremendously in her core, urgent and insistent. She’s pulsing, throbbing already with her own arousal. And the need to repossess, to reclaim, her omega is near overwhelming. She hates the musk of another alpha in Lexa’s scent, no matter how faint it is. She hates Lexa for making her hate it.

“I know, Klark,” Lexa rasps, lips curling up at the corners as she watches Clarke’s boxers tent out with the straining erection, and licks her lips at the moisture that darkens at its point, “but you _are_ my alpha. And I _am_ yours.”

Clarke surges forward, catching Lexa in her arms immediately and yanking her up to allow Lexa’s legs to wrap around her. Lexa still pronounces her name with her tongue wrapped hard around the ‘ _c_ ’ and ‘ _k_ ’, and Clarke cannot deny that there is a part of her that belongs to Lexa, just as a part of Lexa belongs to her. Mated or not, their bodies call for each other, and if Clarke has been summoned for no other purpose than to fuck Lexa out of her heat then… well… she supposes she might as well before she leaves. A blizzard is storming outside and Clarke may well not be able to leave no matter how hard she tries.

Lexa collapses into her, and the wet patch in her underwear presses hot and inviting against Clarke’s abdomen. The growing tent in Clarke’s boxers swells into a straining erection and a tiny, broken voice in Clarke’s heart whispers that this is what she has been craving for months, and to just enjoy it. It whispers that Lexa is _hers_ and she must reclaim her, erase the scent of another from Lexa’s skin and replace it with her own. Jealousy and fury burn low in Clarke’s gut and all that seems to satisfy it is Lexa’s squirming weight in her arms.

But the minute Lexa’s back hits the bed, she pushes Clarke back off her, hard.

“Clothes. Off.” Lexa snarls it out between her teeth, her hands already yanking at Clarke’s top and her mouth leaping at the flesh being exposed beneath. The sensation of teeth scraping against her skin sends a wobble through Clarke’s knees and a groan of pleasure rumbling in her chest. She almost refuses Lexa’s demand to see her naked, but Lexa’s blunt fingers scrape over her ribs and an insistent tongue dips into the hard line of her hip and the sensations send a pulse of heat running along her thickening shaft, and she can’t help but relent.

Her top flies off, her boxers fall in a pitiful puddle around her feet. Lexa’s top disappears too, and Clarke tears Lexa’s ruined underwear off almost savagely as she bends over the omega trembling and whimpering for more contact beneath her.

It is more intimate this time. With every expanse of their flesh exposed to each other, with the urgency in Lexa’s movements and the ache they both feel soothed in each other’s presence, Clarke forgets her hatred and focuses instead on writhing, panting, powerful muscle pushing and pulling against her own. Lexa flips them over the moment Clarke settles on top, one hand holding herself up over Clarke’s shoulder, the other wrapping instantly around Clarke’s throbbing length, pumping slowly, steadily, while she takes a nipple into her mouth and sucks. Clarke releases a shuddering gasp, drives the fingers of one hand deep into Lexa’s messy braids and cups the other over Lexa’s dripping mound. Teeth close over Clarke’s nipple, and cold air is sucked hard against the puckered, pebbled flesh. Heat pulses around Clarke’s fingers, she pushes two in immediately and thrusts in forcefully.

The nipple between Lexa’s lips is released for an agonizing instant, and Lexa buckles against her, legs opening wide to take Clarke’s fingers in deep. Clarke relishes the sensation of hot silk wrapping around her digits, pulls Lexa up roughly to straddle her cock, and starts a grinding motion over her shaft while she fucks her omega with three fingers, stretching her wide in preparation of the erection Clarke can barely wait to sink into her. Lexa whimpers, eyes screwed tightly shut while the hand she has wrapped around Clarke’s throbbing length travels up Clarke’s torso to grasp at her breast instead. Clarke drops her own hand from Lexa’s hair, fingers dig hard into Lexa’s hip, hard enough to leave bruises, while she pushes and pulls Lexa into a hard grind against her.

When Lexa comes, Clarke finds herself bucking up to greet it, cock twitching in jealous anticipation. Wet heat surges between her fingers, splashes against her hips and up her abdomen, soaks the tops of her thighs, and Clarke grunts with the extreme pleasure it induces. Lexa drops over her, teeth fastening over Clarke’s pulse point. The pinprick pressure tells Clarke she’s ready to bite, to claim Clarke even if Clarke doesn’t claim her, and that drives Clarke to push Lexa up, grab the omega by her thighs and pull them both up off the bed completely.

The tip of Clarke’s cock finds Lexa’s entrance, and the ensuing gasp that tears from Lexa’s lips is enough to dislodge her teeth from Clarke’s neck. Clarke slams her omega back into a wall, the hut shudders under their combined weight, but holds.

“Klark,” Lexa’s voice trembles, but glittering, salty green eyes burn with powerful intensity into Clarke’s chilly blue ones. The omega’s legs wrap tightly over Clarke’s hips, Lexa’s arms wrap tightly around Clarke’s shoulders and Clarke strains to not plunge herself fully and immediately deep into Lexa’s dripping cunt. “Klark,” Lexa gasps again, as the flared head of Clarke’s cock pushes past slick folds, “I need you to fuck me.”

Hearing obscenities fall from Lexa’s pretty, swollen mouth drives Clarke to madness. One of Clarke’s hands tangles in Lexa’s sweat-streaked, mussed brown braids, the other cups a small, firm breast, and Clarke thrusts in a few more inches, parting the tight ring of muscle in Lexa’s entrance. Hot, wet silk greets the pounding in Clarke’s shaft, the thunder of their hearts rioting in their chests sync together. It is awkward, but Clarke bends to suck in a dark pebbled nipple, savors the salt on her tongue and the keening moan that shivers from Lexa’s mouth pressed into the nape of her neck.

“Beja, Klark,” Lexa’s voice is a harsh, rasping whisper, the Commander’s hips move in a tormenting, dragging circle and Clarke answers by pushing violently in. Lexa is so tight, but also more ready for her thick girth this time – she refuses to think why – and Clarke is already a little more than halfway inside. She feels an answering shiver in the hot silk wrapped around her length, and Clarke knows Lexa is so fucking close to release. She wraps her tongue around Lexa’s nipple, scrapes it over the hard nub, bites into it hard and this time, it is Lexa’s heels digging into her thighs that push Clarke in the rest of the way. Lexa’s breast falls out of reach of her mouth as fluttering, clenching heat encases her cock from tip to base.

Clarke gives Lexa a moment to adjust. She watches the expression on Lexa’s face, their noses almost touching. Sweat beads on Lexa’s temples and drip down her high cheekbones, and Clarke barely resists the urge to lean in and lick it off. Lexa’s lips are curled into something that looks half like a grimace of pain, half like a tense, grateful smile, and again, Clarke resists the urge to lean in and smooth it away. She adjusts herself against Lexa, pulls herself to stand more solidly on her feet and lean over Lexa against the wall and is satisfied by the uninhibited lust and accompanying pleasure that flits across Lexa’s face. When Lexa finally opens her eyes, there is so much emotion crowding them that Clarke can’t hold back a whimper of her own. The pupils in Lexa’s eyes are so blown with arousal, Clarke can barely see the green of her iris anymore, and more present than the want and need in the inky blackness is a reverence and a deep, undeniable _love_ that, for a moment, Clarke allows her heart to soar for.

The moment is broken when Lexa growls against her mouth, “take me, Klark. I am wet and aching for you.” Silk shivers around Clarke’s length, pulling her in and tearing a whine from Clarke’s throat. Lexa leans in to brush her lips against Clarke’s ear, sending another shot of arousal spinning through her, spiraling into her groin. “I need your come inside me,” Lexa rasps, her hot breath sinking into Clarke’s skin, and the awkward attempt at talking dirty is enough to push Clarke just that side of out of control. She pulls out only to plunge back in violently, her arms braced against the wall to hold them up because her knees are already weak beneath her. Wet heat splashes down Clarke’s thighs, driving her to thrust again hard and fast. She picks up a rough, rapid rhythm, and denies to herself that it is Lexa who sets it with every pulsing, ragged breath she scrapes into her ear.

With their naked bodies pressed into each other like this, with Lexa’s powerful legs wrapped tightly around her hips and Lexa’s blunt nails digging hard into her shoulders, Clarke is ready to explode into orgasm within minutes. Her teeth scrape over Lexa’s neck, and the shuddering gasp that breaks from Lexa’s lips against the shell of her ear drives her harder, farther. Clarke licks the pounding pulse point at the base of Lexa’s neck, delighting in the violent, desperate flutter it makes in return, and barely resists the urge to bite down, hard. The heavy fullness hammering along her length grows unbearable.

She comes on a wave of pleasure, carried by Lexa’s warm mouth closing over her earlobe and Lexa’s sharp teeth nipping into the soft, pliable flesh. Lexa throbs around her, tightens almost painfully around her shaft and shudders in an attempt to suck in every hard pulse of come. Clarke’s knot strains against the tight ring of muscle at Lexa’s entrance, and though Clarke aches to push harder, to drive it in, she holds back. Lexa’s release floods her only seconds after her first powerful spurt of come, and their combined orgasms flood Clarke’s cock, soak her knot, splash up her belly and down her hips, dripping in hot, tingling trails down her thighs.

Clarke knows that Lexa’s heat is over. Their shared orgasm is enough, after ten days of torture, to satisfy it. But heat coils in Clarke’s belly, and she isn’t finished. She can hear the storm raging outside, and Lexa is mewling into her skin, mouth fastened over her shoulder and tongue sweeping instinctively, and Clarke knows her omega is fighting, struggling, to _not_ find her pulse point and bite. When they are like this, Lexa is _hers_ , and Clarke can no longer deny how deeply this affects her.

She pushes into Lexa, grunting as another hard spurt breaks from the tip of her cock and shoots into wildly shivering silk walls. Lexa’s legs tighten around her, another wave of pleasure flutters along her length and washes Clarke’s hips in wet heat. “Fuck me again, Klark,” Lexa commands hoarsely, hips grinding into Clarke’s and Clarke knows that despite the command in Lexa’s words, she is begging for more. Arousal slices through Clarke's abdomen and sends another hard pulse of come barreling through her and breaking in Lexa's flooded depths.

“Your heat is over,” Clarke growls back, but doesn’t pull out. A few more weak spurts push into Lexa’s flooded depths, and Clarke can feel her erection strain with renewed fullness. It does not ease the knot still formed at the base of her cock. Instead, it coils hot and tight in her gut and races arousal down her spine.

“Fuck me again, Klark,” Lexa whispers, mouth closing again over Clarke’s skin, teeth nipping at the spot on her neck that Clarke knows is fluttering wildly for a mating bite she insists to herself she does not want.

Her knees are weak and wobbly. But somehow, Clarke manages to carry Lexa back to the bed without pulling out. A low, deep growl rolls in her chest as she stumbles across the floor and drops into the thin mattress and thick furs. Their skin is still burning, and Clarke is still hard and throbbing. Arousal sears through her veins as Lexa pumps her hips up into her. Clarke yanks Lexa’s arms away from her shoulders, and her skin feels startlingly cold there in their absence.

“Klark!”

There is so much panicked urgency in Lexa’s voice, Clarke almost relents, curls into her and starts to thrust again. But Clarke is determined, still hurting enough to deny her own instincts, and instead pushes Lexa away from her without pulling out. Hard fingers dig into Lexa’s thighs, forcing them to unravel from Clarke’s hips and turn, and Clarke growls in satisfaction when Lexa is kneeling on her hands and knees on the bed, hips tilted up into her and broad, sweat-slicked back open and bare. She pretends not to hear the unhappy whine that tears from Lexa’s throat. “Do you want me to fuck you again or not?” Clarke snarls as she digs her fingers into the firm muscle and hard bone of Lexa’s hips, holding them against herself and keeping herself buried completely in Lexa’s dripping cunt.

“Yes!” Lexa cries out, and Clarke groans in pleasure at the way Lexa’s hips pump back into her, “yes, Klark. Please! I want you to fuck me again.”

All of this is so unlike Lexa, so far out of the cold, in-control Commander Clarke has known for nearly two years now, it almost shocks Clarke out of her arousal. She has heard Lexa beg, but never like this. She has felt Lexa submit, but not this completely, not this desperately, not this _brokenly_. Memories of their first kiss flood Clarke’s brain, and Clarke knows that it was genuine, that it was real. Tenderness sneaks into Clarke’s grip, and when she starts to thrust, it is gentler than she had originally intended. Her omega is hurting, and guilt mixed with instinctive protectiveness spears through Clarke’s whole being. She no longer wants to punish, instead, she wants to satisfy, to soothe, to nurture.

Clarke takes her omega slowly, with deep, powerful thrusts. Her cock twitches with every shuddering breath Lexa takes, and after a few long moments, Clarke succumbs to her impulse to drape herself over Lexa’s back. Her weight is enough to push them both into the bed, and Clarke fastens her mouth over the stretch of skin and muscle between Lexa’s neck and shoulder. Lexa whines pitifully beneath her, but her hands rise and bury themselves in Clarke’s wild mane of golden hair and keep her close. Clarke settles a rough hand around Lexa’s waist, her thumb brushes over Lexa’s hot skin soothingly. She drives her other hand beneath Lexa's body, finds her omega's throbbing clit and strokes it while she rocks her hips. There's a swell buried deep inside Lexa, and it catches on the flared head of Clarke's cock at every outward thrust. It makes Lexa's breath hitch and the fullness pounding along Clarke's shaft shivers and swells every time Lexa clenches around her.

They come together on an intense wave of pleasure. Clarke holds her knot back, but strains inside Lexa, her cock throbbing with every hard pulse of come that fills her omega up, and whimpers as every shudder of Lexa’s orgasm drives both their flooding releases right back out. The bed soaks beneath them, but neither of them have the energy or the drive to move. It is a long, slow release, intense but somehow gentle. The shivering, hot silk of Lexa’s walls wrapped around her continues to shudder and squeeze long after Clarke falls asleep, their mixed fluids warm and sticky against their skin.

Clarke wakes up once in the middle of the night to find her erection has shrunk into a sore bud. Her arms are wrapped around Lexa, they are both lying on their sides and Lexa is spooning into her. Clarke nuzzles the soft, cool skin at the back of Lexa’s neck. They are both shivering with cold, the fire has died ages ago, and when Clarke shifts to push them both off the clammy, soaking wet spot and pull the furs over them, Lexa whines in her sleep.

Once the furs are draped heavily over their shoulders, Clarke brushes the drying tears from Lexa’s cheeks and bends over her to kiss the exact spot in Lexa’s throat where her scent, rich and heavy and thick with Clarke’s musk, is at its strongest. She falls asleep again, still holding Lexa close and trying to pretend that what she feels is nothing more than post-coital affection, and that she can go back to hating Lexa in the morning.

 

 

* * *

 

  

Leksa wakes first the next morning to the sound of hustle and life outside her hut’s door. The blizzard the night before has buried everything in feet of cold snow, but all that means is that her people must work to clear it away in order to start their daily tasks, and she can hear heavy panting and friendly laughter outside. She can hear the excited squeal of the few yongons left in the village as they pelt each other with snowballs and dance clumsily in snowdrifts.

For the first time in her life, Leksa wakes the morning after her heat wishing it was not over. She is intensely aware of Klark’s arm draped over her waist, of Klark’s heavy leg trapping her own beneath the furs. Klark’s breath flares slow and steady against the back of Leksa’s neck, warm and soothing, and Leksa squirms deeper into Klark’s arms. Her alpha is spooning her from behind, and Leksa has never felt so warm, so safe, so deeply good. Even Kostia’s arms around her had never felt this much like _home_ ; understandable, because as much as Leksa loved Kostia, Kostia was not an alpha, not _her_ alpha, the way Klark undeniably is. She doesn’t want Klark to wake up, doesn’t want Klark to leave. She slips her fingers in the spaces between Klark’s and tangles them together, brings Klark’s knuckles to her lips to flutter an affectionate kiss to them, and sighs sadly when she feels Klark’s breath against the nape of her neck pick up.

Klark is awake.

But the alpha does not move for a long while.

When she does move, it is slowly and sluggishly. She groans half-heartedly and pulls her hand out of Leksa’s. “I should go,” Klark’s voice is deep and rough, cracking around the edges, and Leksa yearns to turn over and press her lips to Klark’s throat, to feel those low, gruff sounds tremble into her mouth.

Despite Klark’s shuffle and her roughly growled words, Klark does not leave the bed, and does not rescind her arm or leg from where they drape over Leksa’s body.

“Stay,” Leksa whispers, too afraid to turn around and see the doubt and the hatred burning in her alpha’s bright, eternally blue eyes. “Beja, Klark, please.” Klark stiffens at the sound of her name wrapped in Leksa’s tongue, and Leksa closes her eyes, mouth drawn in a tight, tense line across her face. “Stay. Ai niron.” _My love._ She knows Klark cannot understand her, and it is because Klark does not understand her words that she feels free to say them. It is because Klark does not know how deep her weakness runs that Leksa feels free to indulge just a little longer in that weakness.

She feels Klark relax suddenly behind her, and pretends for Klark’s sake that Klark has fallen back asleep. She knows it is a ruse they are both playing into, that Klark is still determined to hate her and resent her for the sins she committed over a year ago. But the snow is still deep outside, and the furthest Klark can get for at least the next few hours is a ramshackle, unfinished hut to share with strangers a few doors down. If they are stuck in the same village, better they be stuck like this, pretending that it is sleep preventing Klark from leaving, and sleep preventing Leksa from making her go.

It stabs Leksa painfully through the heart to know that Klark stays when she is asked, though Leksa abandoned her at the foot of Mount Weather. It is bittersweet, and tears track her cheeks and temples as she cries again silently in Klark’s warm arms. She feels as if she’s always crying now, as if the tears are never ending, as if she will never stop crying again. No matter how she tries, she can’t seem to make herself stop caring about Klark. Her alpha. Her mate.

Their only disturbance throughout the day is Indra, striding in silently with a tray of hot food in her hands and the tea that Leksa must drink to prevent accidental pregnancy. A Heda with child is vulnerable, weak, and Leksa is already weak enough as an omega whose alpha will not mate her. She is already weak enough as a woman in love.

Klark leaves that night, and the hollow, excruciating ache in Leksa’s chest cracks wider and burrows deeper. It will be a long, cold, dangerous journey for Klark, but perhaps easier than lying in Leksa’s arms pretending to sleep for even a minute longer. Leksa balls her sheets and furs into a corner of her hut – they smell too strongly of Klark – and huddles over her table, planning her departure from TonDC as soon as the weather permits. She is too weak with Klark only a day’s journey away, and her heat came months too soon and far too intensely with the knowledge that Klark can so easily come to her and satisfy it. She prays that, with a week’s worth of distance between them, her next heat will come as scheduled, and will be short and easy to ignore, like it always has been before Klark walked into her tent and into her life two years ago.

She leaves in the first week of spring. There is still snow in patches across the ground, and a bite of chill lingers in the frosty air. Her horse’s hooves churn mud and the journey is slippery and treacherous. As the miles stretch between her and the alpha who should be her mate, the hollowness in her chest expands and the stoicism that has long been her strongest defense digs in deep.

When her heat comes again, it is late fall, two months too early. Leksa feels it in the fevered flush of her skin and the prickle at the base of her spine, and wonders if it is because it had taken her so long to satisfy her previous two heats that brings it on so early, or if it is the exciting, frustrating knowledge that Klark is scheduled to arrive in Polis in only a day’s time with trade caravans from Camp Jaha. It hardly matters. All that matters is whether Klark acquiesces to satisfying her coming heat again when she arrives, or refuses and leaves as soon as she is able.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. For real. Your comments make my day. Your kudos make my day. Thank you so much for your support.  
> For those of you wondering, whenever the story is coming from Lexa's point of view, the Trigedasleng version of spelling for names is used - in particular where a character is either close to Lexa's heart or one of her people. Hence the change from 'Clarke' in Chapter 1 to 'Klark' in subsequent chapters after Lexa comes to the realization that she wants Clarke for her mate, and that Clarke is her alpha.
> 
> Enjoy the fluffiness of Chapter 3, and for those of you in the US, happy Labor Day!

When Clarke arrives in Polis, it is with mixed feelings and a tension in her shoulders that won’t go away no matter how hard she tries to force herself to relax. The news came to her immediately of Lexa’s departure from TonDC months ago, and ever since then, Clarke has felt her omega’s distance keenly, a hollow pit that burrows into her chest and freezes her from the inside out.

The hollow remains even as she closes the final few feet between her and Polis’s massive, imposing gates, but the ice in her heart thaws considerably. And Clarke is unable to be impressed by Polis’s sprawling city-scape, beautiful mix of old and new-world architecture and intense, lively bustle, because a particular, delicious scent is in the air and Clarke’s whole existence narrows completely to it.

It is Lexa’s scent. And in it Clarke picks up the rich muskiness of early heat, and it makes her blood race and warmth flush in the tops of her thighs. She hates that she feels this way, hates that Lexa’s heats have so much power over her, hates that it is _Lexa_ that has this much power over her. She thinks at first she will deny Lexa the satisfaction of bedding her this time around. But she feels the pull to follow that scent, the draw to her omega waiting for her somewhere in the city. And Clarke must stay, her presence is required at the meetings scheduled between all the clans’ leaders. Kane needs her to preside while he proposes a new expansion to the land loaned to them by the Trikru and the Coalition.

It is a business trip. Nothing more. And Clarke thinks that Lexa’s heat is inconsequential – interesting, but nonessential – and that she can deny the affect it has on her. It is irritating that it seems every time Clarke sees her, Lexa seems to be in heat again, and she holds on to her annoyance. It will keep her distracted from the intensifying arousal warming her insides.

She dismounts at the front of her caravan and barks orders at her people to start unloading. Grounders are here to greet them, to help unpack the supplies and stash them in the small section of the city reserved for the Sky People’s use during the trading season. Lexa is nowhere to be seen, but a girl, no older than eleven or twelve, approaches Clarke nervously and tugs at the sleeve of her shirt.

“Heda Klark,” her voice is thin and high, but strong and confident, and Clarke looks down at her, warm blue eyes sweeping to take in the child’s obvious nerves and admiration of her. “Heda Klark, Heda Leksa requests an audience immediately.” Her words are heavily accented, but clear, and Clarke can hear the innumerable times the child must have rehearsed those lines to get them completely right. The girl turns and points to a squat building not far from the Sky People’s quarters, and Clarke can taste Lexa’s heavy scent more keenly, as if she knows it is coming from that direction. Perhaps she does. Lexa _is_ her omega, no matter how ardently Clarke tries to deny it. And her anger and resentment have faded considerably in the months since Lexa betrayed her, and in the times she has helped Lexa through her heats since. She feels a powerful pull coming from that little building, and ignores it long enough to smile at the soft “daunde” the child mutters, slipping inadvertently from Gonasleng to Trigedasleng.

Clarke thanks her, the child runs off to fulfill her other duties, and Clarke lingers with her people long enough to make sure they are settled safely and comfortably before dumping her bags in her room and allowing herself to suck in a long, deep, Lexa-infused breath. The draw is too strong, the heavy ache in her chest too intense. She hates that Lexa has this power over her, but it is getting increasingly difficult to deny. It’s getting increasingly difficult to _want_ to deny. She forgets her annoyance and gives up on trying to ignore it.

She does not explain to Bellamy where she is going, but she knows he has guessed correctly by the sardonic curl of his lip and the studious aversion of his eyes. He lets her go, though he does not trust Lexa yet and hasn’t forgiven her for her betrayal over two years ago.

Clarke has not forgiven Lexa either. But she is nearly salivating already at Lexa’s thick scent in the air, and knows the ever-present ache in her chest will ease the moment she pulls Lexa into her arms. And she can’t drudge up her dying bitterness and resentment enough to be angry about it. Lexa is her omega, and in that moment, Clarke is done trying to deny it. She is done trying to fight it.

She slips away, unable to take in the broken beauty of her surroundings, or soak in the elegant fire of the sun setting over the city’s walls. Even if the child had not pointed out Lexa’s home, Clarke would have been able to find it easily. Lexa’s scent grows stronger the closer she gets, until Clarke is standing at her doorstep and the robust, warm smell of bark and earth and musk curls invitingly around her.

She doesn’t knock. She knows what she will find behind the door and doesn’t waste time putting fist to wood. The door slides open easily and silently, and Clarke hurries to shut it just as silently behind her. She can hear Lexa in another room, panting and moaning, and can smell her arousal winding around her in a way that makes her belly clench and desire coil in every inch of her already sweating skin. It’s hot, but that’s not a surprise. Clarke shucks her jacket, dumps it on the floor beside the door, and toes her boots off. A low, needy whine coming from another room pulls at her, and Clarke can feel the bud of her clitoris stiffen and swell even as arousal pools wet and slick in her underwear. It gathers in the creases of her thighs, held there by her skin-tight pants. Clarke sucks back a moan and pads deeper into Lexa’s house, knowing without needing a tour exactly where Lexa is waiting for her.

Her pants are unbearably tight by the time she pads into Lexa’s hot, stuffy room. Clarke pops the button and pulls the zip to give her growing erection space, and stares wantonly at the sight that greets her. Her mouth is dry, her knees already feel weak, and she dips a hand into her pants to cup her swelling cock and give it a slow, firm tug.

Lexa is sprawled across a double bed. The furs spill over the edges and tumble haphazardly across the floor. And Lexa is propped up halfway against the headboard, legs spread wide and three fingers already buried deep inside. Wetness glistens on her tanned knuckles, spills down the creases of her thighs and forms a dark spot on the mattress beneath her. Lexa has been masturbating for a while, Clarke can tell by the thickness of Lexa’s scent in the air and the thin layer of sweat glowing on her naked skin. She watches as Lexa lifts her head, pupils blown black with lust, and stares back at her. Her fingers continue to pump, her hips jerk, and a needy whine spills from Lexa’s lips.

“Klark,” Lexa says in a heavy gasp, driving a shudder of arousal down Clarke’s spine. She loves the way Lexa pronounces her name, with hard, clicking ‘k’s and a softness somewhere in the middle. She has long given up trying to deny it. “You came.”

“Not yet,” Clarke growls, the desire in her rumbling voice unmasked, and a grin curls on her lip to see Lexa’s shoulders shake and her hips rise as she plunges her fingers in and out. Clearly, Clarke’s voice alone has the power to completely undo the stoic Commander. “Fuck yourself for me, Lexa. This time, I want to watch.”

Lexa cries out, hips surging off the bed and her hand between her thighs twitching erratically. Clarke steps closer, steps up to the foot of the bed and positions herself between Lexa’s legs to watch the way Lexa’s fingers drive in and out of her. She’s close, Clarke can see her petaled outer lips flutter, and a sweet-smelling gush of wetness surges over Lexa’s straining knuckles. “Just like that,” Clarke murmurs, her voice low and deep and gruff, while one hand skates along the inside of Lexa’s thigh. Her cock is at its full length now, throbbing between her own fingers, and Clarke gives it a few hard pumps to ease the heavy fullness straining it. She licks her lips, eyes flicking up to catch Lexa’s to find that Lexa is staring open-mouthed at her, expression blank and tense as orgasm flits within reach. “Fuck yourself on your fingers, Lexa,” Clarke growls, and a drop of wetness beads in the slit at the head of her cock, “pretend it is me inside you. Pretend it is my length splitting you open instead of your fingers and come for me.”

Lexa shoves a fourth finger inside, and Clarke moans at the sight. And then Lexa’s whole body arches off the bed, and a gasping, keening groan rips from Lexa’s throat. Orgasm rushes out between Lexa’s frantically thrusting fingers, and Clarke can’t stop herself from kneeling on the bed and attacking Lexa’s glistening, pulsing entrance with her mouth.

Lexa’s wild moan stretches and heightens into a scream. Her fingers fly from between her legs to dive instead into Clarke’s hair, tugging her in, tugging her closer, and Clarke seals her mouth over her omega’s cunt and swipes her tongue past the throbbing ring of muscle to suck down every drop of Lexa’s release. She tastes good. Better than good. Clarke’s cock gives a jealous, angry pulse in her fist, and Clarke drinks her omega’s orgasm greedily, humming in pleasure as the heady flavors fill her mouth. She tastes like earth, like growing things, like cool shadows and warm life and sweet sap-stained bark. Clarke is addicted to her immediately, and wraps an arm around Lexa’s hips to hold her up while she sweeps her tongue through soaked folds and scrapes her teeth over Lexa’s stiff, swollen clit.

She can hear Lexa sobbing with relief. The sound wrenches at something deep within Clarke, and satisfaction curls in her chest. She can taste how early in her heat Lexa is, the orgasm that continues to flood her mouth tastes fresh and it is unrelenting and heavy. Her omega is in heat for her, because she knew that Clarke was coming to her. Clarke embraces the possession and affection that surges in her heart completely, unable and unwilling to push it aside any longer. Lexa will be hers to fuck for days before her heat is over, and Clarke isn’t surprised by the lack of disappointment she feels at the thought, or by the sudden rush of excitement it brings her instead. She spends long minutes alternating between Lexa’s pulsing entrance and her clit, tracing circles, nipping and suckling silky skin before sliding her mouth up to tug the sensitive nub between her lips and teeth, lashing it with her tongue, and stroking back down. Lexa’s hips start to roll against Clarke’s mouth, the omega’s hands in her hair pull her closer, and Clarke can’t suppress a slow, rumbling groan in answer to Lexa’s sharp, panting cries.

A string of wetness stretches from Lexa’s slick opening to Clarke’s soaked mouth when she’s finally sucked down every drop of Lexa’s come and pulls away, and Lexa whimpers at the sudden loss of contact. Her hips fall, and her fingers return to stroke the throbbing muscle Clarke abandoned. Clarke grins, licks her lips, swipes at the heat spread across her cheeks and chin and dripping down her throat. Her intent is clear in the burn of her blue eyes, and Clarke can see the instant Lexa realizes it. Her whole body jerks in response, and as Lexa’s darkened eyes fall to Clarke’s unsheathed cock, she releases a gasping moan in eager anticipation.

“Clothes – “

“Off,” Clarke interrupts Lexa’s shattered order, “I know.” She grins in satisfaction at Lexa’s confirming whine and tears at her shirt while Lexa leaps forward to tug her pants all the way off. They work together to bare Clarke completely, fingers scraping and breathing erratic with their urgency. When Clarke is finally standing naked, member stiff and erect, Lexa rises to stand too. Clarke notices with pride the way the Commander trembles for her.

She cups her hand over Lexa’s mound. Arousal drips between Clarke’s fingers, remnants of Lexa’s last orgasm and fresh need brought on by her heat and by the alpha standing naked in front of her. Clarke’s hardened cock brushes against Lexa’s belly, and Lexa releases a soft whine, pulses more wetness into Clarke’s hand, and reaches up to grasp Clarke’s shoulders for support.

“You’re wet for me,” Clarke comments, her voice low and rough. She can’t help but slide a finger into the slick heat, and has to catch Lexa where she wobbles, smirking at the weak nod Lexa gives her in reply. The omega has not been in heat for long, but her appreciation for Clarke’s prompt arrival and willingness to help her through it has her submitting fully and immediately. It makes Clarke’s blood race, and her belly clench with need. “Lie down,” Clarke demands, though she does so softly, gently, and supports Lexa’s weight as the omega – _her_ omega – leans back obediently to do as she’s told.

It is unusual for her to be so compliant. But it is not the first time. Clarke remembers the last heat she helped Lexa through, and an involuntary tenderness steals through her. She knows it will be nearly impossible not to bruise her mark into Lexa’s skin this time. But she’s not ready to let go of the past yet either, not ready to forgive Lexa for her betrayal, and not ready to submit herself to the commitment and the conclusive bond of a mating bite. What they have is already more than enough, is too much, for Clarke to fully comprehend.

So Clarke settles between Lexa’s legs, but pulls herself low on Lexa’s body, kissing her way around a perfect, round little breast and down Lexa’s ribs. She delights in the newfound knowledge that Lexa is ticklish there, and licks teasingly between flexing muscles. Lexa growls at her, need clear in the throatiness of the expression, and Clarke growls back playfully.

“Up, Klark,” the omega begs in a plaintive whine, and Clarke nips apologetically at her hip before answering with a muffled ‘no’.

“I want to taste you again,” Clarke explains when Lexa’s needy whine chokes, and is pleased by the sudden hitch in her omega’s breathing. “I want to fuck you with my tongue first. Then we will see about the rest.”

Clarke’s deliberate but affectionate use of such filthy language has Lexa’s skin shivering beneath her mouth. Lexa’s legs rise around her shoulders, strong calves settle over her back, and fingers, rough and calloused, wind through her already mussed hair. Lexa’s possessive grip on her sends another desperate shudder racing the length of her cock, and Clarke tugs it firmly in an attempt to ease the ache that has settled in it. She wants Lexa, and this time, she wants _all_ of her.

Lexa arches her hips up into Clarke’s mouth the instant Clarke’s hot breath flares across the mound. Clarke laughs into the wet heat that encases her face. It is incredible how free, how light, how _good_ she feels, with Lexa’s scent wrapped around her and Lexa’s skin pressed against her and Lexa’s growling moans breaking in her ears. She ignores the guilt it brings her to feel this good with the woman that betrayed and abandoned her and her people, and focuses instead on the slick, writhing muscle under her mouth. She buries her face in Lexa, slides her tongue through swollen lips, gathers Lexa’s arousal at the tip and licks it back to savor the taste. She drags her teeth over Lexa’s swollen clit, teases it with a swirl of her tongue, sucks it into her mouth and releases it with a soft _pop_ when she feels Lexa’s thighs tremble and tighten around her ears.

She knows when Lexa’s arousal grows so intense, pleasure is threatening to turn into pain. She throbs with Lexa, and moans with Lexa, and writhes into her own hand with Lexa. She knows the instant she drives her tongue past the tight ring of muscle she has been teasing, Lexa will erupt into orgasm. She knows she will make her omega scream for her, and the potential that it is her own name Lexa will scream has Clarke grunting as she thrusts hard into her own fist. Lexa’s thighs squeeze so hard around Clarke’s ears she can barely hear herself growl, though she feels every single one of Lexa’s moans traveling from Lexa’s throat to her clit, throbbing against her upper lip, running live electricity down her spine and into the hard, pulsing member gripped tightly in her hand.

So Clarke drives her tongue forcefully, shoves it past the clenching ring of Lexa’s entrance and almost chokes at the intense flutter of tense muscle against it. Lexa’s fingers tighten painfully in her hair, nails digging unmercifully into her scalp, pulling her face impossibly closer, as if Lexa is trying to fit Clarke’s whole mouth into her.

Then Lexa screams, and Clarke almost comes to the sound of her own name ringing in her ears.

In a single, fluid motion, Clarke tears herself out of the cradle of Lexa’s hips, slides over the writhing omega beneath her and forces her whole length deep into Lexa. Hot, wildly quivering silk wraps around her cock, and Clarke grunts at the intense pleasure of finally being inside. But she knows she’s hurt Lexa, and the intensity of her regret and concern for her unmated omega shocks Clarke out of her instinct to start thrusting immediately. Lexa is stiff and tense beneath her, harsh panting breaks erratically over Clarke’s shoulder and the sting of hot tears soaks into her already sweat-slicked skin.

“Sorry,” Clarke grunts, and because she truly means it, she nuzzles into the hollow of Lexa’s throat. She kisses the sob that trembles there, licks the hard swell that Clarke knows is a lump corking Lexa’s cries in her chest.

Lexa relaxes slightly under her. Her arms rise hesitantly and slide over Clarke’s shoulders. Her knees push up shakily and brace Clarke’s hips, cradling Clarke’s whole body into her own. Clarke gives her a few long minutes to adjust, gives her enough time for the pain she knows she caused Lexa to fade, and then gives her a little longer anyway, to give Lexa space to breathe. It drives her crazy, it takes every shred of self-control Clarke has to not start pounding hard and deep because she is _so_ damn close to a release of her own. But her omega is hurting, and Clarke can no longer ignore Lexa’s pain the way she used to.

Lexa’s stiff body beneath Clarke’s uncoils slowly. Clarke whines to feel warm, rough fingers trail slow patterns across her sweaty skin, and hums in satisfaction to feel the walls wrapped tight around her cock flutter slightly again. Clarke peppers the smooth expanse of Lexa’s neck with kisses, and is gratified when Lexa tilts her chin up, exposing more of that warm, vulnerable skin to Clarke’s seeking mouth. It is not until Lexa starts to arch her hips up into Clarke’s that Clarke finally starts to move.

She’s gentler than she wants to be at first, pulling only slightly out and sliding back in slowly, carefully. Lexa’s hips roll up, finally seeking more friction, and Clarke moans deeply at the clench and pull of Lexa’s slick cunt around her throbbing length.

“Fuck me, Klark,” Lexa whimpers, and Clarke wonders if Lexa knows how powerfully that demand affects her. Clarke nips at the wildly quivering pulse in Lexa’s throat, closes her mouth over it when Lexa arches her neck up into the almost bite, and thrusts a little bit harder, a little bit deeper, into her omega.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Clarke growls when Lexa rasps her favorite demand into Clarke’s ear again, and is stunned and delighted at the answering shiver she can feel roll down Lexa’s back. Concern wells in her chest to feel hot tears burn against her jaw, but the soft, slow smile that curls into her neck soothes it away instantly.

Clarke knows that what she is doing with Lexa is _not_ fucking. But she avoids putting a name to it and rolls her hips slowly into Lexa’s, savors the quake of slick, firm muscle around her cock and the needy whine that erupts from Lexa’s lips when they are both so close they could melt. Lexa’s arms are wrapped tight around her back, fingertips digging into grooves of muscle, and her legs are bound firmly around her waist. Her heels dig into Clarke’s ass, dictating the speed and intensity of Clarke’s hips as they gyrate into her. Clarke has managed to slide both arms under Lexa’s back, and is holding her tightly in return.

“Klark,” Lexa’s whisper is cracked and broken. Clarke can hear the despair in it, but she can also hear the hope in it, and it warms her heart and sends a pulse of heat bursting through her. Clarke’s voice has the power to completely undo Lexa, but Lexa’s pronunciation of her name can and will make Clarke come.

Clarke pulls back a little, hushing Lexa’s soft, confused whine with a tender kiss pressed to the corner of her lips. She wants to look into Lexa’s eyes when they crumble into ruin in each other’s arms. She wants to see the expressions breaking across Lexa’s beautiful, flushed features when orgasm claims them both.

“Klark,” It is breathed more than said. Clarke feels it brush against her mouth, and the pulse of pleasure that rips through her races the full length of her cock, erupts from the head and rushes into Lexa’s clenching, throbbing depths. Though Lexa’s pupils are blown black, Clarke can see in the way her eyes widen how hard her release hits her. Soft, swollen lips part in a silent scream, Lexa’s chin tilts back in complete submission, in an instinctive entreaty for Clarke to dip her head into the crook of her neck and claim her.

Clarke chokes on her sudden, driving need to do exactly that. She splutters on the instinct to bury herself deep enough into Lexa’s pulsing warmth to knot her, bind her, make her completely, eternally, inescapably _hers_. Salt burns behind her eyes, her gums itch and burn to be buried in flesh and muscle, but she only lowers her head to smooth a kiss into Lexa’s open mouth. Wet heat floods the seal between their bodies, escaping past the hard, swollen knot Clarke barely holds back. Their combined orgasm bathes their interlocked hips and soaks into the mattress beneath them.

Clarke hates the pain and the regret that shudders in her chest. She hates that she doesn’t hate the woman trapped in her arms. She kisses Lexa hard, fights the tears burning behind her closed eyelids and pretends not to feel the answering tremble in Lexa’s chest pressed beneath her own. She pretends Lexa isn’t sobbing beneath her, that she isn’t broken and aching for the mating bond Clarke refuses make. It’s too confusing, too frightening, to bear thinking about. Clarke knows she _must_ hate Lexa, after everything Lexa has done. There is no room for anything else, no space in her heart for anything but hatred and resentment and anger.

But those emotions have been dulling with time. Clarke does not want to admit it, but they are. Her ghosts stay with her, her guilt over the massacre in the mountain will never go away. And she will never mate her omega because she cannot love the woman that forced her hand and took away the only option that would not have left her a murderer either way. She can’t.

But as she rolls her hips into the omega beneath her, as she presses kisses into Lexa’s swollen mouth and feels their combined release swell and erupt in bursts between their joined bodies, she is numb to the anger, the hatred, the resentment. She’s too tired of feeling them. She craves the warmth of Lexa’s arms, and welcomes the possession, the passion, that invades her tattered heart while she is with her omega. She pretends it is Lexa’s heat that has brought this on, pretends not to be in control when she knows she is. She pretends it is base instinct, because she doesn’t know how to make room for the affection taking root in the wreckage she’s become.

They fall asleep in each other’s arms, Lexa’s heat sated enough for the time being to allow her a few hours’ rest. Together, they roll away from the patch of soaked mattress and huddle into each other, flutter kisses against lips and noses and cheeks and sigh together until exhaustion dulls the empty hollow in their chests and sleep tugs them under.

 

* * *

 

Leksa wakes in the middle of the night, curled in her alpha’s arms and feeling battered and sore, in heart and soul as well as body. There is a painful throb radiating through her core, and Leksa slips a hand between her hips and Klark’s to dip her fingers between her thighs and try to massage the bruised muscle gently. Wet heat spills across her digits instead, and the throb shifts from aching pain to expectant pleasure.

Klark stirs slightly beside her, and Leksa sighs as warm hands travel down her spine then back up, and strong arms tighten possessively around her. Her alpha’s breath flares across the top of her head, heavy with a sigh of her own.

“You’re touching yourself, aren’t you?” Klark’s voice is cracked and rough with sleep, and Leksa feels her alpha curl into her, feels Klark’s thigh burrow between her own to press against Leksa’s fingers stroking her entrance. It pulls a soft, involuntary whimper from Leksa’s throat and Leksa finds herself rocking gently into the added pressure. “Oh my god –,” Klark’s breath catches, and Leksa feels the swollen bud of her alpha’s clitoris suddenly twitch and swell hard against the back of her hand. Klark’s arms around her retract to push Leksa onto her back instead. Klark rises over her, pale eyes flickering in the ethereal moonlight and hungry as they wander down to where Leksa’s hand is still cupped over her slick entrance.

Embarrassment washes over Leksa. She pulls her hand back and away, though an insistent throb pulses through her. “Don’t stop,” Klark whispers as she kneels between Leksa’s legs, hands stroking the insides of her thighs and kneading over her hips, “I love to watch, please don’t stop.”

A blush burns Leksa’s cheeks. She licks her lips and stares at Klark while she scrapes along the outside of her thigh with damp fingers. “Touch me, Klark,” Leksa whines softly, throat dry and chest already beginning to heave as heat smolders under her skin. She needs to be fucked, needs Klark’s lengthening cock inside her, but she’s still so sore, and her entrance felt tight and swollen under her fingertips when she ran her fingers through her folds mere minutes ago. She doesn’t want to touch herself, not with Klark watching, it’s a little humiliating. Klark has seen her finish with her fingers before, but it’s different now, when Leksa hasn’t even begun. She reaches for one of Klark’s hands, slides it down over her mound, and whimpers when Klark grins in the darkness and pulls her hand right back out of Leksa’s. The whimper deepens into a groan when her alpha presses a series of damp kisses along the inside of Leksa’s thigh.

“Klark, please,” Leksa is growing desperate, and it is all too apparent in her needy whine. She reaches for Klark’s hand again, but Klark sweeps away, still pressing maddening kisses interspersed with quick swipes of her tongue along Leksa’s skin.

“Touch yourself for me, Leksa,” Klark whispers, low and rough with arousal. The sound of Klark’s voice slices hot and sharp into Leksa’s belly, and has her arching her hips up in search of some kind of contact or friction. Leksa tries again to pull Klark into her, to bring either Klark’s fingers or her mouth to the insistent hollow ache deepening in her core, but Klark is stubborn, and Leksa can’t take waiting for relief any longer.

Her hand scrapes reluctantly over her hips, her fingers slide around her clitoris and Leksa’s breath is caught in her throat at the hungry stare Klark gives her. She sinks her middle finger into the tight, sore ring of muscle around her entrance and swallows forcefully at the deep growl that rolls from Klark’s chest. Her embarrassment is forgotten as Klark closes a fist around her stiff length and starts to pump it gently, and Leksa hooks her finger inside, thrusts a little deeper, and is rewarded by the drop of moisture beading at the divot at the head of Klark’s cock.

“Another finger,” Klark prompts, her voice gravelly with her arousal, and need shudders violently through Leksa at the sound. She’s pulsing with it now, her slick is dripping past her fingers, and Leksa raises herself up on one hand to afford a better angle to pleasure herself. Klark’s teeth nip teasingly into the inside of her knee, and Leksa is spurred on far enough now that she knows she can’t stop. Not unless her alpha stops her first. She navigates another finger inside and jerks her hips up into her own hand.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” Klark’s voice is full of awe, and Leksa throws her head back, exposing her neck to Klark again, simultaneously hoping that Klark will lean in and bite, but also that Klark will simply drink the sight of her in, watch with the wanton desire obvious in her voice while Leksa pleasures herself. Her previous embarrassment is washed away in the wake of Klark’s admiration.

For a little while, the only sound in the room is the harsh rasp of their panting breaths, the steady wet squelch of Leksa’s fingers working between her legs and the occasional muffled shift of the sheets as she and Klark slide and rock against empty air on the bed. Leksa raises her head to stare at her alpha and catches her bottom lip between her teeth at the sight that greets her. A flush has risen in Klark’s cheeks and is spreading slowly down her neck to her chest, and her hips are jutted forward while she fucks into one hand. There is a slick gleam smeared across the pulsating head of Klark’s cock and over the tops of her fingers, and one of Klark’s hands is clenched around Leksa’s thigh, hard fingers digging mercilessly into the crease joining her leg to her hip. A fresh wave of need washes through Leksa, and Klark’s hips jerk to see it slide between Leksa’s fingers and drip down onto the bed below.

Leksa presses the heel of her palm into her aching clit and hisses as it pounds and twitches into her hand. She’s close, so close, and as her head tilts back again in pleasure, she feels warm, damp fingers hover over her own…

A third finger – Klark’s – pushes in past the clenching ring of muscle in her entrance, and Leksa has to bite back a sob at how good it feels. Their fingers slide together, and the unpredictable alternation of pressure between her top and bottom walls builds an unbearable tension coiling in Leksa’s abdomen.

“Klark - !” She’s on the verge of orgasm, and she knows Klark can feel it in the wild spasms shuddering against their fingers. Her hips pump upward of their own accord, taking curling digits in all the way to the knuckle and Leksa almost comes at the sound of Klark’s low, needy moan. “Another -,” Leksa’s legs wrap around Klark, though Klark is still kneeling in the bed between them, and Leksa prays that her incoherent beg is understood. Klark’s finger retracts and Leksa arches to hold it in greedily.

Two fingers glide in to replace the one, and Leksa knows a few hard pumps will see her spilling over in release. Klark’s breath ghosts over the inside of her thigh and all four fingers curl up, hitting the swell in her front wall at _almost_ the right angle and Leksa can’t breathe. She’s shuddering, so close, and the stretch in her sore entrance is more pleasant than painful as Klark’s fingers curl against Leksa’s again, and a hard thumb pushes her hand aside just enough to press gently over her throbbing clit –

The fullness inside her releases in a heavy flood. Klark’s hot breath skates over the inside of Leksa’s thigh again, and she’s twitching, squirming, pounding both their hands into her cunt with the one she’d used to hold herself up. And as Leksa collapses back into the bed, her legs wind around Klark’s shoulders, pulling her alpha in closer. Release pours out of her, undulating tides of wet heat around their fingers that she can feel Klark lap up with her tongue, and it only makes Leksa’s orgasm more violent, more intense. She can’t reach far enough in with her own fingers, whimpers with need for more even while she writhes in ecstasy, and shudders as Klark moves her hands out of the way to pump with her own fingers instead.

“You’re so beautiful,” Klark whispers again into her entrance and Leksa jolts as her alpha’s mouth closes over her and starts to suck.

Stars explode behind Leksa’s eyelids. She loves that Klark enjoys drinking her down, loves the way Klark’s tongue dips between the fingers she’s still fucking into her, loves the pressure of Klark’s lips around hers. She pumps her hips up into Klark’s mouth, a soft, high-pitched whine spilling from her throat as Klark’s teeth nip at her folds, and floods her alpha’s mouth with another wave of release. Klark’s fingers curl up again, tapping the velvet swell in her front wall and driving still another gush of release racing into the hot mouth trapped over her.

Eventually, the dense torrents taper to light currents, and Klark’s fingers and tongue slow against her. Leksa is boneless by the time her aftershocks finally fade and Klark licks her clean, and doesn’t move when Klark’s weight drifts over her and settles there. She can feel the hard heat of Klark’s cock pressed against her entrance, and whimpers softly into Klark’s shoulder as she wraps her arms tightly around her alpha.

“You’re too sore to take me in, aren’t you?” There’s a note of disappointment in Klark’s voice and it drags against Leksa’s heart for a moment until Klark’s resigned sigh rushes over her ear and her alpha shifts to lie down beside her on the bed instead. Leksa grins tiredly into a creamy pale shoulder and grips her alpha’s hips.

“Turn over,” she rasps, pressuring her touch just enough to show Klark what she wants. Klark looks at her for a long minute, expression wrinkled in confusion, but does as Leksa asks.

Leksa has never been the big spoon for Klark. It’s a little thrilling, because while she is the more outwardly dominant woman in public, Klark is clearly the one in control in private, and this slight reversal in role is an exciting exercise in trust for both of them. Leksa presses her front to Klark’s back and ignores the voice in her head that tells her it means very little, that even if Klark trusts her in bed, it does not mean she trusts her in anything else, and wraps her hand around the throbbing length of Klark’s cock. It twitches into her palm, and Leksa grins into her alpha’s shoulder when she hears the hard puff of air that exits Klark’s lips.

Klark’s bottom arm curls up to grasp at Leksa’s hair while the other squeezes under Leksa’s to grip the omega’s hips, holding her fast while Leksa wraps her legs around Klark’s to keep them close.

“How did I taste?” Leksa murmurs into Klark’s skin as she starts a slow, easy rhythm with her hand, and sucks in a happy breath at the way Klark stiffens into her and moans. At first, Klark doesn’t answer, and Leksa nips sharply at her alpha’s shoulder to indicate she’s waiting for an answer. She smirks and preens when Klark’s answer comes out stuttered.

“Go- good –,” Klark’s breathing is shaky, and she pumps her hips reactively into Leksa’s hand. Leksa speeds up and clenches her fingers around the throbbing muscle. Hot moisture trickles over her fingers and Leksa glides her thumb over the pulsing head with her next upward stroke. She loves the whimper that tumbles from Klark’s mouth in reaction.

“Good… how?” Leksa presses, before tracing patterns along Klark’s shoulder with her tongue. Klark’s cock twitches and swells in her hand, and Leksa almost whimpers herself at the fullness that throbs up the shaft. She closes her mouth over Klark’s shoulder instead.

Klark is stuttering again, her hands clench in Leksa’s hair and over her hip as she tries to conjure a more descriptive answer. “Fuck,” she curses softly, “sweet –,” she’s gasping, “’s faint – oh fuck,” her words are slurring and her hips jump as Leksa slides her thumb again over the pounding head, smearing the drop of moisture that beads along the divot at its tip. Leksa hums in approval, and Klark pumps wildly into her hand, so close to release Leksa can feel it in the tension coiled in every muscle of Klark’s body and in the unrestrained throb of Klark’s cock fucking her closed fist.

“Come for me, Klark,” Leksa whispers, though the command is clear in the steely tone she uses, and it sends Klark crashing into orgasm. Klark’s hips jump into her grip and freeze for a fraction of a second, and Leksa has to suck in a moan at the pressure that runs under her palm and out in a hard hot stream of come shooting from the head of her alpha’s cock. It ribbons, silky and white, in the air before splashing across the bed, and Klark picks up the quick rhythm Leksa dropped to release several hot, heavy spurts in quick succession.

Leksa wants to lean over her alpha and lick it up, to taste it, savor it, but she doesn’t want to let go of Klark long enough to do it. And Klark’s fingers are still digging hard into her scalp and hips, even as her thrusts slow and her orgasm tapers into weak pulses. Exhaustion begins to steal over her, but she holds on to consciousness long enough to stroke the last few jets of her alpha’s release from her softening cock and nuzzle one last time into Klark’s shoulder before sleep finally takes her.

With her arms wrapped around her alpha's body and her mouth closed over her alpha's shoulder, Leksa's sleep is easy, safe, comfortable, and she forgets for a little while that the woman curled into her is not her mate. She forgets, and a soft smile twists the corner of her lip, and for a little while, Leksa has never been so happy.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry in advance. Please don't hate me, I swear it will get better! <3

Leksa wakes to the scent of Klark all around her. She breathes in the smell of their shared orgasms, breathes in the salt of Klark’s sweat and notes with a mixture of vague disappointment and happy comfort that Klark has turned to face her in their sleep. She noses the hollow in Klark’s throat and just breathes, and it’s almost enough to make her forget that Klark has refused her. Again.

She knows it is her heat making her feel this way. But she aches for Klark’s teeth. She knows when her heat is over, the pain will dull to a faint, hollow throb, and that she will miss Klark, but not the way she does now. But knowing doesn’t soothe the burn of tears behind her eyes, tears she has begun to shed even long after and long before her heats. She loves Klark. But Klark does not love her back.

Perhaps it’s for the best. Their relationship with one another is so complicated, so conflicting, Leksa doesn’t even know how to begin to address the issue of mating. And Leksa feels again, like she did at Mount Weather, that her head will war with her heart and win. She wants Klark. Desperately. Wants to mate her, to settle into life together, to never have to let her go. But this is impossible, because Leksa belongs to all her people, and cannot belong to any single person at once. No matter how much she wants to, no matter how driven the instinct, she cannot allow herself to belong to Klark the way she yearns to, and Klark’s decision the night before not to mate her was wise. No matter how painfully it shatters Leksa’s heart.

Klark’s arms around her are heavy and warm. Her alpha’s leg is a comforting weight across Leksa’s own, and the possessiveness of Klark’s hold on her is welcome and soothing. Leksa knows that today, they’ll both be required to make appearances, that they’ll both required to step back into the role of Heda for their people. Tonight, and every night for the next week, there will be bonfires, festivals, celebrations for the end of the harvest season, and both she and Klark will have to be there. Heat or no heat.

And she has been an absent enough Heda during her heats for the past two years. With her alpha beside her this time, she has no excuse.

All the same, Leksa hopes Klark’s possessiveness will carry over to their waking hours. It is weak to hope for it, but Leksa can’t make herself care anymore. She is weak, and she knows it. She has no solution for it.

Fingers brush through her hair, and Leksa’s eyes flutter closed at the sensation. Klark’s skin shivers pleasantly under the butterfly kiss, spreading a slow, rare smile across Leksa’s lips. She’s forgotten what it feels like to be happy, and never known what it feels like to be happy like this. She cherishes the emotion, stores the flutter of her heart and the warmth of Klark’s arms around her in her memories to be brought out again when she needs it most. This happiness she feels is not weak, but it is so deeply entwined with the single thing that is destroying her, and Leksa does not know what that means, or how it is possible.

“Lexa?” Klark’s voice is cracked and rough with sleep. Leksa hums in answer and nuzzles the hollow of Klark’s throat again. Klark’s fingers card through her hair and slide down to stroke her spine instead, and Leksa shivers in appreciation for the affectionate gesture.

“Sha, ai niron,” _yes, my love_. It is selfish and probably a little rude for Leksa to answer her in a language Klark has not learned and cannot understand, but Leksa aches to tell Klark she loves her, and this is the only way she knows how without chasing her alpha away. It’s the only way she knows how without exposing her weakness completely. Klark chuckles, and Leksa feels the vibrations against her mouth, where it is pressed over the swell of Klark’s throat.

“English, please.”

There is a smile in Klark’s voice. It’s new, and Leksa loves it. Leksa’s tongue darts out to lick teasingly along her alpha’s neck and is rewarded by an answering roll of Klark’s hips. Her alpha’s cock retracted the night before, but there is a dampness between Klark’s legs and Leksa can feel Klark’s clitoris against her thigh twitch and swell slightly. Leksa pushes Klark gently onto her back, slides herself halfway on top to maintain complete contact, and lifts her face to look her alpha in the eye. Klark’s pupils are already swallowing the sweet summer blue of her iris, and her alpha’s growing arousal is spreading a demanding, hollow ache in Leksa’s core.

“We should get up,” Leksa sighs, and pulls away to do that, to gather her clothes and make her tea and start her day. She’s gratified by Klark’s fingers digging into her hips and dragging her back into bed, and a shudder of arousal rips through her at the gentle, insistent dominance of her alpha.

Klark growls, low and deep, and Leksa cannot resist spreading her palm over her lover’s chest to feel the way it vibrates. “Not yet,” Klark rasps at her, and Leksa fights a grin when Klark plucks Leksa’s hand from the valley between her breasts and slides it down against the cock swelling and stiffening at the apex of Klark’s thighs.

Leksa chokes back a whimper. A surge of wetness rushes through her and a flutter of need has her wrapping her fingers around the hard shaft pressed against her hand. Heat prickles the back of her neck, Leksa is foolish to think either of them will be capable of doing anything productive without a good fuck at least every couple of hours to sate her heat. Her contraceptive tea can wait, but the arousal coiling in her belly will not.

Klark’s mouth stretches into a slow, triumphant smile. Leksa swallows hard as the length under her fingers twitches and swells, and now she can’t fully wrap her fingers around it. She gives it a slow tug, from base to tip, and shudders with pleasure when Klark bucks up into her hand.

For a change, it feels so damn good to lose. Leksa’s resolve crumbles completely, she shoves the bed covers off and straddles her alpha in a couple swift movements and arches her back to feel the tip of Klark’s cock brush her backside. Before she can slide over it, Klark’s hands take her hips and hard fingers dig almost painfully into her skin and Klark is pulling her up, sliding her over her chest and ducking her shoulders under Leksa’s thighs. Confusion jars Leksa momentarily, until she realizes Klark’s purpose.

“Again?” Leksa breathes, shuddering and whimpering in pleasure as Klark’s hot breath skims over her thigh.

Klark laughs, and the expression has Leksa writhing and grinding in search of contact, friction, because the warm, damp air that stutters across her skin is driving her crazy. She knows she’s dripping lasciviously across Klark’s neck, jaw and cheeks, and it only makes the pulsing ache throbbing in her core worse.

A warm mouth presses into the inside of Leksa’s thigh, deepening Leksa’s hollow need. Leksa gasps and writhes, and almost misses Klark’s muffled voice beneath her, “Are you complaining?”

“No,” she moans, desperate for Klark’s tongue and teeth and lips, “just kiss me!”

Klark’s mouth and tongue licking and kissing along the insides of her thighs are driving Leksa to absolute madness. She drives her fingers through Klark’s hair and pulls in a frantic attempt to redirect Klark’s attention to where she needs it most. Klark only laughs again. “Yes, Commander,” she teases and Leksa moans because her title has never sounded sexy before, but the way it rolls off Klark’s lips and into the stiff, aching bud of her clitoris makes her arch her back and heat pulse wildly through her.

She knows she will never hear her title the same way again when Klark’s mouth finally closes over her dripping cunt and Klark’s tongue sweeps through her folds. Leksa groans in delight, grinding her hips into Klark’s face, pleasure rippling through her at an alarming speed and intensity. Her nails scrape against Klark’s scalp, and every hum and moan Klark gives echoes inside her, pulls wet, hot pleasure through her core and makes her buck and writhe and grind into the tongue that slides teasingly around her entrance and the mouth that sucks every drop of Leksa’s arousal down.

Leksa whines in disappointment when Klark’s mouth leaves her entrance. But teeth scrape over her clitoris and Leksa shudders, appeased. She looks down to find Klark staring up at her, eyes dark with uncontrolled lust, and shivers at the sight of her thighs straddling her alpha’s face and her slick glistening across her lover’s flushed cheeks. Klark’s hands are pressed over her thighs, fingers and knuckles white with the tightness of her grip. Leksa can’t look away, the sight of Klark’s head buried between her thighs is intoxicating, and she rides Klark’s face, thrusts into Klark’s straining tongue and comes screaming Klark’s name again. She didn’t miss the way it affected Klark the night before, and she forgets the way Klark’s eagerness ripped excruciatingly through her right after.

She feels the vibrations of Klark’s growl in her core, and pretends the word buried inside her is ‘Mine’.

Then Klark is pushing her down, hard hands quaking against the instinct to bury her whole length inside Leksa’s dripping, throbbing cunt in a single thrust the way she did last night. Leksa is just as eager as Klark is, though, and takes half of Klark’s length inside her immediately, flinching at the burning pain that tears through her.

“Stop – “ the command is broken on Klark’s mouth, and Leksa bends to kiss it away, struggling against Klark’s hands to bury more of her alpha inside her, “Lexa please. I don’t want to hurt you.”

The concern in Klark’s cracked voice sends a heavy pulse of wet heat rushing in a wave through her, soaks the throbbing cock pressed against her, makes her inner walls clench and shudder with need. It is enough to make Leksa forget that, when she’s not in heat, Klark hates her. It is enough to give her hope that her alpha might break her pattern and mate her. It is the selfless strength that never seems to fade no matter what tests Klark’s heart that Leksa fell in love with. It is everything Leksa wishes she was and knows she is not.

Leksa responds with a whimper. She feels hollow, empty, and Klark’s cock buried halfway inside her feels like it will split her open and it’s all Leksa wants. She can feel the clenching muscles in her cunt trying to pull Klark completely in, and knows from the tension in her lover’s body that Klark can feel it too. “You won’t,” she lies, shuddering into Klark’s shoulder, and works a few more inches of Klark’s throbbing length into her. It hurts, she’s still so sore from the night before, but the little more she takes in fills her up a bit more and she clenches again greedily around the thick, rigid pulse between her thighs. Klark’s hips surge under her, but her alpha is so careful, so gentle, all Leksa feels is more arousal flooding her and a warm, pleasant pressure in her core.

She is surprised that when she takes Klark’s whole length, Klark does not flip them over to claim dominance and start a punishing rhythm to bring them both to orgasm.

“Klark,” Leksa breathes into her lover’s mouth, her lips hovering mere centimeters from Klark’s lips, and is rewarded by a soft, deep growl and Klark’s hips moving, and a powerful twitch from her alpha’s throbbing length buried deep inside her. Klark’s voice can drive her to orgasm, and Leksa takes pride in the previous night’s discovery that the way she says her alpha’s name can do the same to Klark. “Klark,” she whimpers, and grinds her hips over Klark’s, rides her alpha’s cock the way she rode her face. Klark shudders and moans beneath her, hips jerking and rolling up to meet Leksa’s.

Urgency seeps into their movements. A knot swells against Leksa’s entrance and she yearns to grind harder into it, to take it inside her, to be full to bursting with Klark’s seed. She’s close, and she knows by the frantic pace of Klark’s hips pumping into hers that Klark is barely holding herself back. She throws caution to the wind, closes her mouth over Klark’s pulse point and scrapes her teeth against Klark’s skin, poised to bite.

“Oh, god –“ Klark’s growl cracks, she thrusts hard into Leksa, and orgasm breaks her in half. Tense arms wrap Leksa into a vise grip, the first spurt of Klark’s come exploding into her has her shuddering, but it is the teeth prickling over the spot in her neck where her scent is strongest that drives Leksa to intense, mind-numbing release. Leksa screams Klark’s name again, stretches it, shrieks it, and Klark’s teeth press harder into her skin. Klark’s cock is pulsing hot, hard streams of come into her wildly fluttering inner walls, her knot is straining against Leksa’s entrance, the intense pressure she feels, the fullness it brings her, is blissful, and Leksa’s teeth close again in preparation of a mating bite. She doesn’t care if her responsibility is to all her people and not Klark alone. She wants this, desperately.

Klark breaks apart in her arms. The pressure of her alpha’s teeth over the muscle stretched between her shoulder and neck intensifies with every wild pull of Leksa’s gushing orgasm and every hot stream of come that bursts inside her. But they do not break her skin, and Leksa can’t force herself to bite hard enough to lay a physical claim on her mate. She wants the bites to come together, just as she and Klark come together.

Klark’s knot strains, and just as the ribbons of her come begin to slack and fade, Klark breaks into orgasm again. Leksa hasn’t stopped coming, but her release intensifies into something white-hot and all consuming. Klark’s hips and thighs straddled between her own are soaked with their shared pleasure, and Leksa can smell it pooling into the mattress beneath them. She wants to bite harder, she wants to claim Klark, mate her, take her knot and bind them together, and irrationally, selfishly, she wants her belly to swell with Klark’s seed, so that it can swell again later with Klark’s offspring. Hot tears burn behind Leksa’s eyes. She loves Klark, but Klark does not love her.

Though Klark’s knot does not tie them, they stay like that for nearly an hour, bound in each other, coming again and again until Klark’s knot deflates, and her teeth finally detach from Leksa’s shoulder.

Leksa whimpers in disappointment, and Klark licks the slight bruise her teeth made in her skin apologetically. This time, it’s not enough to ease the sharp, searing ache in Leksa’s chest. Leksa rolls off Klark wordlessly, doesn’t bother to get dressed, only wipes herself clean on her already filthy sheets and pads to the kitchen to brew her tea and never meets Klark’s searching eyes. It hurts too much to look at the woman who should be her mate, but who consistently rejects her. It hurts too much to see the apology in Klark’s eyes and know that her alpha’s regret and instinct are not strong enough to overcome her hatred and disgust with her. It hurts too much to know that Klark will never forgive her for a betrayal Leksa can’t and won’t apologize for, and that this is only an example of the sacrifices Leksa must make for a people who continue to strip her of everything Leksa wants in order to get from her what they need.

Klark bathes first, while Leksa gulps down her scalding cup of tea. The herbs in it are bitter and almost vomit-inducing, but are effective in preventing pregnancy during the most fertile days of the year. Even without taking Klark’s knot, even with her alpha’s come spilling out of her almost as soon as it is sucked into her, risk of pregnancy is high, and Leksa cannot betray her people by carrying the child of the woman who will not mate her. Hedas do not get to start families. Even when they are omegas and it is both their birthright and their greatest instinct. Leksa will die and pass her Commander Spirit on before she is ever blessed with a child.

Leksa bathes after Klark, who is gone by the time Leksa emerges from the washroom. Her alpha’s scent lingers in the sheets, in the walls, in the air she breathes, and it is enough to drive Leksa to fuck herself one more time on her fingers before she dresses herself and finally leaves her house. The guards stationed on the roof leap down after her, smirks stretched across their lips for the sounds they heard the night before though their anxiety for the weakness growing in their Heda is hidden deep in their hearts. Leksa knows about the rumors circulating among her people, but she ignores them. It is a way of preserving her dignity, and Leksa refuses to think she is in denial. She doesn’t know that the Azgeda villages up north have heard the rumors too, and are considering a rebellion to implant their Kwin, _their Queen_ , in Leksa’s place.

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke’s cock has shrunk back down into a sore bud by the time she exits the bath. She can smell the sourness of Lexa’s tea mingling between their mixed scents, knows it’s the reason Lexa hasn’t swollen with her child yet, and can’t decide anymore how she feels about it. The drive to bite into Lexa’s shoulder this morning was so intense, so demanding, it had taken every ounce of Clarke’s self-control not to give in to the instinct. It was the sobering realization that Clarke had almost taken for her mate the woman who abandoned and betrayed her at the foot of Mount Weather that finally crushed the lingering arousal keeping her stiff and swollen.

She doesn’t hate Lexa. She’s not sure she ever has. Clarke cards her fingers through her damp hair as she exits Lexa’s house, simultaneously relieved and disappointed not to see her omega before she leaves. Confusion swirls in Clarke’s chest, prompted by the knowledge that she _must_ hate Lexa for her past betrayal, but that somehow, she doesn’t. It makes her feel guilty, makes her feel slightly sick, because Lexa’s betrayal led Clarke to the genocide of an entire people, and their deaths demand that Clarke hate the woman who compelled her to it.

And besides, Clarke knows that although allied again with the grounders, her people would be outraged at a complete union. Their alliance now is only an alliance of peace. The Sky People do not trust the Trikru in war, and will never trust Lexa not to betray them again if they were to march together. It is an alliance borne of a need for support, of an instinct to survive in this harsh but beautiful new world. It is an alliance of necessity. And despite her realization that she does not hate Lexa, Clarke knows, surer than she knows her own name, that she has neither forgotten that Lexa betrayed and abandoned her nor forgiven Lexa for it.

Bellamy is waiting for her when she returns to the section of the city reserved for the visiting Sky People. His dark eyes bore into hers, and she knows he can smell Lexa’s scent buried in her own. She knows his sharp eyes have caught the purpling, bite-shaped bruise flowering in the crook of her neck. A scowl forms on his lips, and Clarke ignores it.

“You spent the night with her,” his voice is quiet and accusatory. Clarke gives him a sidelong look, they don’t have a lot of time to discuss this. Monty and Harper are already setting up a stand for their wares and Kane is already gone to see the other clan leaders to discuss trades and tithes and a proposal to use more of the land surrounding their camp for farming. Lexa will join them soon, and her word will decide the matter. Thoughts of Lexa churn in Clarke’s gut, a flush rises in her cheeks and tingles hot and wet in the space between her thighs, and a mysterious, nauseating pain curls in Clarke’s chest.

“Yes,” she replies blandly, not rising to the bait. She stops where she stands, fingers brushing over the change of clothes she knows she needs before she can mingle with Polis’s people. “And I’ll spend every night with her for the next few days.” _At least until her heat is over,_ she wants to add, _and maybe even longer than that_. The thought of sleeping beside her omega every night even after her heat is over until it’s time to go home sends a tingle of warmth running down Clarke’s spine and eases the ache in her heart.

Bellamy’s lips lift into a snarl. “She betrayed and abandoned us, Clarke. She betrayed and abandoned _you_ ,” he hisses, arms crossing over his chest, and Clarke can feel his fury rolling in the thick air between them. “Did you forget? The genocide of the Mountain Men sits on her shoulders, Clarke. It’s her fault you’re haunted.”

Something snaps in Clarke, and rage bubbles into a wild, uncontrollable entity that seeks to explode from her chest. A growl rolls low and dangerous in her throat, her blue eyes flash coldly, and she knows by the sudden, frightened step back Bellamy takes that she must look terrifying. He is an alpha too, and a generally stronger, more dominant one than she is, but in this moment, he submits to her. She will not allow him to speak of her mate – _no, not mate, but something_ – in this way.

“ _I_ am the one who pulled the lever,” she growls, fingers clenching into fists on either side of her as she forces her fury down into something she can control, “the genocide of the Mountain Men sits on _my_ shoulders, not hers. It is _my_ fault, Bellamy, and _I_ will carry the blame alone.” It was why she left. It was why she had to leave, to ensure that the sacrifice she made stayed hers and was not shared and parceled out among those who had no hand in the choices she made.

Bellamy lifts his chin, exposing his neck to her in a rare expression of submission. “I pulled the lever with you,” he replies slowly, quietly, calmly. “It’s my fault too. But none of that would ever have happened if Lexa didn’t ditch us in the first place. We had no choice.”

Clarke shakes her head, clearing away the sharp burn of her rage with it. He’s right, she knows he’s right. But she can’t seem to help her immediate instinct to protect her omega, or their confusing, tenuous relationship to each other. And maybe, Clarke realizes, she understands the decision Lexa made years ago, to abandon Clarke and her people in order to save her own. Maybe, in essence, it is similar to the non-choice Clarke made herself: to sacrifice another’s people for the sake of her own. Her change of clothes in hand, and a confused nausea swirling in her gut, Clarke turns her back on her best friend and stalks away, muttering angrily back at him, “Neither did she.”

She avoids Bellamy for the rest of the day after that. But the last thing she said to him haunts her afterward. It is at the crux of her twisted relationship with Lexa, the answer to her reluctance to mate her omega. Clarke realizes she always knew that Lexa had made the only choice she thought was available to her, but can’t seem to shake the pain that choice brought her. It’s why she can’t hate Lexa, why she never hated her. It’s why she’s afraid to trust her again and mate her.

Despite the ache that blooms harder and hollower in her chest whenever she’s close to Lexa, Clarke finds her soon after she’s changed into clean clothes and does not leave her side. She growls when other alphas approach, despite knowing that they have no intention of mating her omega while Lexa is in heat. She doesn’t touch Lexa, but she doesn’t allow anyone else to touch her either, and the small, secret curl at the corner of Lexa’s lip when Clarke’s possessive behavior becomes obvious warms the frozen depths of Clarke’s broken heart. Clarke struggles not to grin in pride when Lexa’s cheeks tint pink every time someone calls her ‘Commander’.

Kane’s lobby for more land wins him half of the property he proposed, though the tithes and return in crops the deal yields is more than Kane and Clarke were initially prepared to accept. Still, it allows for their growing population to expand. With the restrictions on childbearing lifted, families are encouraged to have more children, and more couples are trying for first, second and third babies. Octavia and Lincoln, who have finally returned to Camp Jaha to welcome, open arms, are trying for a child of their own.

By the end of the meeting, Lexa’s heat-induced pheromones are enough to drive Clarke crazy. She catches herself picturing Lexa stretched out across the table an embarrassing number of times, leather pants pulled down around her ankles and her fingers buried halfway inside her. She pictures watching Lexa fuck herself, pictures her own head buried between Lexa’s thighs and Lexa’s legs wrapped around her shoulders. While the clan leaders and Kane file out of the meeting room slowly, chatting with each other and arguing over agreements made, Clarke finds she has to keep her hands folded over her crotch to hide the erection growing and straining against the front of her pants.

She sweeps everything off the table once the last of them sidles out through the door, unconcerned anymore with the idea that one of them might pop back in with a question, comment, or complaint, and shoves her omega roughly over the clean surface. Lexa is more than ready for her, and unbuttons her own pants while Clarke struggles with the button and zipper restraining her cock far too tightly for comfort.

The moment she feels she has room to breathe and grow, Clarke helps Lexa yank her skin-tight pants down around her ankles and holds her omega against the table with a hard grip over Lexa’s hips. They don’t have time for full penetration, it takes too long to manipulate Clarke’s thick girth into Lexa’s tight walls. But Lexa’s arousal is forming a pool of slick, delicious heat on the table, and Clarke’s fingers slide through her wet folds immediately, drawing a long, deep moan shivering from Lexa’s throat that is answered in the hard throb tightening at the base of Clarke’s cock.

“Lie down,” Clarke growls, eager to live out her recently most frequently imagined fantasy. Lexa shudders at the roughness of her voice and obeys, splays herself across the table and grips the edges so hard her knuckles turn white. Clarke slips a finger inside her omega, groans at the way Lexa arches upward, small, firm breasts rising with the motion, and tugs hard on her erection to ease the ache she feels to bury herself completely in the tight, wet space her finger occupies.

She works a second finger in, and her hand pumps her cock a little faster. Fucking Lexa with her fingers like this, watching the wetness slide over her knuckles and the way Lexa’s hips rise with every inward thrust of her hand, will be enough for Clarke to come. “Wider,” Clarke rasps, and as Lexa’s knees inch outward, more of Lexa’s glistening cunt is revealed to her. It sends a wild pulse of heat breaking through her, and wetness of her own beads at the tip of her cock. She brushes it into the inner crease of Lexa’s thigh and works a third finger in. The muscle around Clarke’s digits flutters, tightens, and the rumbling moan of pleasure Lexa gives has Clarke gasping in return.

Though Clarke wishes the fist she rubs along her length is Lexa’s hot silk, it is unbelievably satisfying to circle Lexa’s clit with her thumb and thrust her fingers inside and watch Lexa come apart in her hand. It is incredibly arousing too, to watch her fingers slide inside Lexa’s entrance and come out dripping, to see the way rivers of Lexa’s arousal wash over her knuckles, slide down the crease of her thigh and heat the red, swollen head of her cock pressed against it. Watching Lexa’s cunt throb for her has Clarke coming into Lexa’s split open entrance where her fingers stretch her wide, and she knows the streaks of hot white come that shoot into her are what drive Lexa over the edge. It is fascinating to see waves of Lexa’s release pour out of her, and Clarke’s orgasm throbs harder as it splashes back up Clarke’s length with it.

Lexa is trembling by the time Clarke finally pulls the head of her cock and her fingers out. Clarke has to lean against the edge of the table to keep herself standing and sucks her dripping digits into her mouth before falling into Lexa’s waiting arms and kissing her hard. She loves the way Lexa moans at the taste of her own release on Clarke’s tongue. Clarke knows she will have to have more of Lexa before the Harvest Festival starts, and knows that Lexa’s heat will have her omega wet and dripping for her long before the next chance they have to fuck again. Clarke buries her face in Lexa’s neck, and Lexa nuzzles her back affectionately, gratefully, and nips her skin because even though she just orgasmed, she’s already ready for more.

Neither of them brings up Clarke’s refusal to seal their bond with a mating bite, but their teeth close over that morning’s bruises and Clarke licks her teeth marks in Lexa’s skin apologetically. Clarke can’t decide if she wants to talk about it or not, and finds herself both grateful and disappointed when they don’t. She still has too much to sort through on her own, and part of her wonders if a conversation with Lexa will confuse her more, or help her navigate the tangled mess of her thoughts and feelings.

They separate for a few hours after wiping the table down carefully and rearranging the things Clarke swept off its surface to hide their tracks. Their heavy, shared scent is an obvious giveaway, but it also has Clarke eager for the next time she and Lexa will spend hours in this room.

Clarke has to help her people set up their stalls in the market and radio to Camp Jaha, and Lexa has to oversee the rest of the festival’s setup. But they come together again just before sunset, brought to the same place and with the same purpose in mind by sheer instinct and need. Again, Clarke avoids Lexa’s neck while she pleasures her. She kneels between Lexa’s legs just inside the door of Lexa’s squat building because the walk to the bedroom is simply too long for them both. Lexa’s ruined underwear is around her knees and one leg of her pants is hanging over her ankle while the other pools between her feet. Clarke masturbates while she fucks Lexa with her tongue, and comes to the sound of her name between Lexa’s teeth and Lexa’s blunt nails scraping against her scalp and Lexa’s orgasm washing hot across her face.

It isn’t until the last day of Lexa’s heat that the topic of mating finally comes up between them.

Clarke can’t avoid the intoxicating space between Lexa’s neck and shoulder for long, especially during the extremely active nights they spend together. The bruises in both their necks are yellowing, but fresher ones overlay them in varying shades of black, brown and purple. Neither of them have broken the skin, and their mating bond remains incomplete and transient. After the bruises heal, this _whatever-this-is_ that is not mating between them will fade. Clarke can’t decide how she feels about it, but knows she doesn’t have it in her to do anything about it either way.

Lexa is splayed on top of her, panting and exhausted and dripping with sweat. The wet-spot under their joined hips is massive and stretches across the whole bed, and Clarke knows they’ll have to sleep on top of the furs to escape the damp cold. But right now, she doesn’t care. Right now, her knot is throbbing against the ring of tight muscle in Lexa’s entrance and weak ribbons of come are still pulsing into Lexa’s walls. Right now, the hot silk wrapped around her cock is still fluttering with aftershocks and hot waves of their combined orgasm swell between them, soaking Clarke’s belly, hips and thighs. She licks the layers of bruises on Lexa’s neck, trying desperately to pretend the tension in it is a result of the mind-blowing sex they can’t stop having. But Lexa’s teeth fastened over tender skin finally release and Lexa lifts herself on Clarke’s chest to stare down at her. Impossibly warm, deep, impenetrable green eyes bore into her own and Clarke flinches at the sting of salt pooling in them. She’s never actually seen Lexa cry. She has felt it, heard it, smelled it, but she has never seen it, and somehow, the visible vulnerability cracks Clarke’s chest open and makes her want to submit, just to ease the pain burning in her omega’s eyes.

“Why won’t you mate me?” Lexa whispers brokenly. Her voice is cracked from screaming Clarke’s name, but her words are frayed because of the hurt hollowing her out, not the pleasure of Clarke’s cock filling her up.

Clarke brushes the hair from her lover’s face, leans in to kiss Lexa’s cheek, but Lexa pulls away. The denial smarts, and Clarke hisses as if physically burned. “You know why,” Clarke growls, and pushes Lexa off her. Her chest is tight and she needs space to breathe.

“I am weak, Klark,” the omega’s voice trembles, and Clarke hates how it makes her feel: tortured and dying on the inside. She can hear the words Lexa isn’t saying and wishes she could say them back. Instead, Clarke pulls herself off the bed and gathers her clothes. Her cock has shrunk to a sore bud already, and she knows by the subtle change in Lexa’s scent that her heat is over. She is not needed here anymore. “Klark! Please!” A hand closes over her wrist, but there is no strength in it, and Clarke easily shakes it off. “Let me give you everything, all of me,” Lexa breathes into the tight, tense air between them. Clarke flinches at the offer, she knows Lexa can’t follow through, no matter how much she might want to. She knows Lexa has already given every part of herself to the people who call her ‘Heda’. But she can hear the sob in Lexa’s throat, and hates herself for putting it there.

“You know you can’t,” Clarke growls, fighting to keep the tremble in her chest contained, “this is not a decision you can make with your heart.” Lexa stutters at Clarke’s direct reference to her betrayal, and Clarke can’t turn around to face the tears she knows are tracking down Lexa’s face. Instead, she dresses herself in minutes, trying all the while to ignore the sound of Lexa’s pain. “Klark!” Clarke shudders, because the sound of her name is strangled on Lexa’s tongue, and the instinct to kiss it better is overwhelming. “Were I not Heda…”

“But you are,” Clarke’s words are hard, final. She brushes her fingers through her hair, pulls it up into a ponytail to keep it off her sweaty, sticky neck, “and you can’t. You have to put your people first, Lexa. And that means sacrificing me.”

“Klark, stay. Please stay.”

Lexa’s plea wraps around her heart. It’s arresting, and Clarke pauses stiffly in the doorway of Lexa’s room, shoulders tense and her heart stuttering and screaming in her chest for her to turn around and submit to her omega. But she doesn’t. She tilts her head back just enough to catch in the corner of her eye Lexa’s small, broken frame curled in the furs on the bed and whispers in a cracked voice, “No. Not this time.”

She leaves to the sound of Lexa’s heartbroken sobs and her own blood rushing traitorously in her ears. She doesn’t see Lexa again for many years.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are awesome. The torture is almost over, I promise! Answers will be coming to you slowly over the next few chapters. This is the only non-explicit chapter in the story - but it was necessary for the resolution. All the porn is back in the following chapter!
> 
> Big thanks to my new beta, Flynn Hurricane, who unofficially edited chapters 3 and 4 for me and is now taking over in a much more official capacity as beta for the rest of this story AND the new multichap A/B/O fic I'm currently working on.

Watching Klark leave that night is one of the hardest things Leksa has ever had to do. But Klark is right. And Leksa knows her request is selfish. She knows that she will never be able to be for Klark what she aches to be, what Klark needs her to be. She knows Klark will never be able to forgive her for what she’s done and that alone is enough to stop Klark from ever loving her. Leksa must continue to belong to her people, all her people, and Klark must continue to hold her accountable for what she’s done. It is her punishment, her atonement, her pole in the center of the village and Klark must continue to cut her until Leksa finally pays her debts with her final breath.

It is so reminiscent of the way Leksa walked away from her years ago under the shadow of a mountain that still hangs over them. And that only breaks Leksa further apart.

They avoid each other for the final week of Klark’s stay. Instead, Leksa deals through Kane or Bellamy and ignores their sharp looks and the anger burning in their faces. It is too difficult looking into Klark’s eyes, seeing her disappointment and her resentment there. It’s too difficult being so close to the woman she aches to give her whole heart to. It’s too difficult to hear her voice, because while Klark’s people have allowed her to retain her heart, Leksa’s has long been parceled out to the coalition crumbling into ruin around her.

The Trikru are at war by the first snowfall. Leksa catches word of villages being raided and pillaged and burned to rubble in the far reaches of the north, on the outskirts of Ice Nation territory. She is relieved to realize before she leaves with her army that this war will kill her. A runner is sent to TonDC and Camp Jaha immediately after that to alert them that they are at war. For the Sky People, it is a formality. It changes nothing, because not only are the Sky People under no obligation to assist or support their allies in conflict, Leksa would never beg their help. Not after last time.

She wonders if Klark worries about her. She wonders if Klark cares. She wonders how Klark will feel when she inevitably hears the news that Heda Leksa has died, and her Commander Spirit has found another vessel. Perhaps it is pessimistic to think this way, but she is just so tired, and she has grown so weak. She wants only to get her people through this last conflict, bring them to a more lasting peace, give the last shred of her heart that still aches for Klark to her people so that she can rest. Let the next poor child grow into a ruthless Heda who will be strong and energetic enough to sacrifice everything she is for a people that ultimately do not care.

The Ice Nation are ruthless in their assault. When Leksa arrives up north, she finds that it is not only a few ransacked villages in ruins. There are new fortifications, new holdouts in their places, and the Ice Nation has already advanced deep into Water Tribe territory. The Rock Clan is gone, wiped out, and the remaining Water Tribe gonas and fisas are weary and broken. It took too long for word to reach Leksa, and Leksa regrets waiting as long as she did to forge her second alliance with the Sky People. The technology she brings with her now to the north could have saved so many of her people before the raiding escalated into full-scale war.

The worst of the conflict rages for nearly a full year. The Wolf and Blood Tribes have betrayed the Coalition, and Leksa finds herself nearly outnumbered on more than one occasion. Rumors of her weakness had spread much farther than Leksa was aware, and even her own warriors stare when she rides past and whisper behind her back ‘if Heda goes into heat’. Her people no longer trust her, even after everything she has given them, after everything she has sacrificed for them. But she carries them on her shoulders, carries the war past Water Tribe territory and through Rock Clan territory back into the Ice Nation’s borders. She carries them with the strength she has left, with the last shred of the heart she wills to Klark.

But at least she knows that when she does inevitably die, her people will not turn on the Skaikru, and Klark is safe, will forever be revered for her strength.

So Leksa brokers a peace between the Blood and Wolf Clans. She releases them from the Coalition, if they cease their attacks and break their tentative alliance with the Ice Nation. They are small clans, and will not stand long against Leksa’s still impressive army. And Leksa promises to wipe them out if they try. They are easily convinced that the traitorous Ice Nation will not support them if Lexa is to turn the might of her army on them. They pull their warriors, turn around, and head home.

Leksa knows it is her last dawn when she wakes up in a cold sweat and Klark’s name still on her tongue. Her heat is months late, but she is still hollow inside and still aches for her mate. She knows it will be her final day as Heda, because she sees it still, painted on the insides of her eyelids in blinding whites and hot, screaming scarlets. Today, she will send Indra and a small team of stealth warriors to break down the gates of the Ice Palace. Today, her army will breach the walls and take the Ice Nation’s final holdout. Today, she will wipe out what remains of the Ice Nation’s army. But most importantly, today, she will kill the Azkwin, and she will die drowning in her blood. It will be the last kill she ever makes. The war will end today, the Ice Nation will fall, and Leksa can rest easy knowing her people will be safe again, and that her death will be the last sacrifice her people will ever ask of her. It’s soothing to know this, and Leksa sighs, rakes a hand through her hair and conjures fading images of Klark’s face to her mind, the memory of waking beside her alpha that makes her heart flutter with joy in her chest, and smiles before finally rising.

Her gonas and fisas remark on the strange, grim smile set in Leksa’s features when she rides past them. The sun rises bloody, and Leksa bellows deep and loud as she charges in the front line. She sees the Azkwin riding toward her too, clad in white and blue, bigger than life with a cruel smile running jagged across her stone cold features, and Leksa feels great satisfaction in the knowledge that she will finally cut her down, finally find retribution for the death of Kostia. She can never apologize to Klark for the sins she’s committed, or take back what she’s done and make it better. But at least she can atone today for allowing the murderer of her first love to walk free.

The battle rages through the day and into the night. The massive double doors of the Ice Palace topple, and Leksa feels the morale of her people grow as they advance to the finish line of this bloody war. Victory becomes as certain as Leksa believed it to be that morning, if only Leksa can topple the Azkwin as surely as Indra and her warriors toppled the palace gates.

Leksa loses the Ice Queen many times in the chaos, but always seems to find her, each time she does a little closer than the last place she’d seen her. The moon rises redder than the sun, and hangs low and massive when Leksa finally finds her for the last time.

She sees her howling at the moon from the splintered double doors of her palace’s main hall. Fires rage in concentrated spots around them in the snow and along the massive walls towering around them, toppled from sconces or lit by the fire arrows that rained down during the first charge on the Ice Palace. The dead of both sides litter the ground, and the air is full of the cries of battle: screams of rage and shrieks of pain. It stinks of blood and sweat and shit, but Leksa is too accustomed to the stench now to notice. Her horse lies dead and mutilated somewhere on the battlefield, but Leksa is too tired and too lost in her own rage and pain to remember where. She is bloodied and one of her eyes is too swollen to see out of. She thinks one of her fingers is broken, and her shoulder has been dislocated and relocated so many times in this single day she can no longer properly feel her arm. But it is not her sword arm and Leksa knows, she _knows_ , it will not stop her from spilling Azkwin blood. She spits into the churned and bloodied snow between them, one furious green eye catching the Kwin’s inky black ones. Leksa’s lips lift into a snarl just as the Kwin’s curls into a manic grin. The Kwin is bloodied too, but she is in better shape than Leksa, most of all because her heart is whole and unbroken, if frozen and shriveled.

“Heda Leksa,” Nia snarls at her, and Leksa can clearly hear the mocking tone in her words, “your coalition dies tonight. I will watch its head roll off its shoulders, as I did with your precious Kostia.”

Leksa does not react. She knows Nia’s words are false bravado, she knows that the war is all but won, and that the only way Nia can extend it at all is by killing her before she dies. And Leksa will not allow that. So she focuses all her old rage on Nia’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities. But Nia is not done taunting her.

“You have no idea how weak you are, child,” Nia’s voice is gloating, patronizing, as she darts in to swipe the edge of her blade along an opening at Leksa’s side, but her sword comes away unwetted with Leksa’s blood. “First Kostia, and now Klark – sacrificing your strength for a people that have been sacrificing you from the beginning.”

Nia’s words are her weapon, and the minute she mentions Klark, Leksa feels her will weaken. Leksa realizes this as she circles her enemy. Nia is tired, exhausted from a long day of battle, but she understands that it is not only a sword’s edge that can make a person bleed. And her words have a powerful effect on Leksa, who growls in reply, because it had taken all her strength to sacrifice her heart at all, both times. It was the strength those sacrifices had borne her that had made her people strong.

Nia smirks through the blood and sweat and dirt streaked across her face. Her teeth glint ferally in the scarlet moonlight. She looks rabid, with her dark eyes burning in the red glow of battle and that mad grin stretched across her mouth. “Do you ever wonder that this war could have been avoided if you’d only avenged your Kostia’s death? It was your love of her that made you strong, _Heda_ ,” the way Nia spits the word out tells Leksa just how little the Azkwin thinks of her.  “Know before you die,” she hisses, “you mistake invulnerability for indifference. It was _sacrificing_ your feelings that made you weak.”

Leksa roars at her words, denying the truth in them with every dying inch of her body, and charges in.

Their blades sing and scream as they dance around each other, grunting with effort, hissing in pain. It is a blur, a smear in Leksa’s vision as she darts out of reach, deflects the Ice Queen’s heavy blows, falls and rises and fells and misses. The fight does not go well for her for some time. Leksa is shot through with an arrow mid-fight, but can hardly feel it for the rage and hatred boiling her blood. Her sword is broken, cracked and shattered by the Kwin’s claymore. One leg pains her so badly she can no longer support her weight on it. It is not until, by some stroke of skill and luck, Leksa manages to dart under the Ice Queen’s upstroke and slice her dagger along the inside of her thigh that Leksa realizes she’s won. Hot blood spits in a sizzling arc and steams where it hits feet of snow. But Leksa knows it’s the end for her too when she can finally feel the dizzy ache that tells her she has lost too much blood and the throb in her side of the broken arrow shaft still sticking awkwardly out of her. Her knee throbs, and she can’t breathe, but her oldest enemy collapses before her and lies dead at her feet, and Leksa finally crumples to the sound of the victory horn howling in the darkness. Kwin Nia’s words resound in her head, and it is as Leksa’s eyes close and she begins to lose consciousness that she finally allows herself to see the truth in them, and finally sees that denying herself the love and joy she craved did not make her strong. It only left her without anything to be strong for. Finally, she understands: strength and insensitivity are not the same thing, are not even related. But it’s too late, and it hardly matters now. She sleeps in a pool of blood, hers and the Ice Queen’s together, and their combined body heats, both fading, sink them into many feet of snow and ice.

 

* * *

  

Clarke receives word of the Heda’s death at the start of the new year. The war is over and won, the Trikru are victorious, the Ice Nation lies in ruins, and life returns to the abandoned village of TonDC. Indra returns, grizzled and war-weary, but alive. Nyko does not. This is when she learns through whispers that Heda is dead, and the search for the new vessel of the Commander Spirit is on.

Clarke hears it in the middle of a trip to their neighboring village. She files the information away silently for later examination, and focuses all her attention on completing the tasks she came to finish. Namely, to collect the nails, hammers and other tools crafted by TonDC’s blacksmith, to deliver the new shipment of hand-held ECGs Raven built, and to barter for a new team of horses for the spring. The farms around Camp Jaha were multiplied, and though horses were not necessary upon their acquisition, they will be in the spring, when the soil will be tilled.

She starts her journey back to Camp Jaha earlier than she anticipated, because she’s no longer in the mood to sit with the village’s elders for a chat and a few games of chess. She refuses to mull over the news of Lexa’s death on the way home, and waits until the steel tools are delivered around her small, but growing village, and avoids every familiar face she sees on the way to her small hut on the village’s outskirts.

It’s not until she’s toed off her boots and stripped her heavy fur coat and thick wool scarf and gloves, started the fire in its hearth and poured herself a glass of warm, mulled wine that she finally stops long enough to think, to remember, to mourn.

The wine spills in her haste to wrap her arms around her legs and curl into a tight ball. It stains into the thick white fur carpet and Clarke doesn’t care. She doesn’t care, because her mate, her omega, is dead. She doesn’t care because Lexa died without Clarke ever telling her that she loved her. She died believing that Clarke hated her. She died without the scars of Clarke’s teeth marks decorating her neck.

She feels hollow, empty, broken. She realizes suddenly how foolish she was for leaving the Harvest Festival the year before early, how cowardly her refusal was to mate the woman she loves. _Loved_. She hates herself for her stubborn resentment, for her blindness in the face of all that matters, everything that matters. She replays every moment she’s ever shared with Lexa in her head over and over again, wishing she’d done things differently, wishing she’d been brave enough, alpha enough, to take a leap of faith and give Lexa the love and strength that might have carried her through this war – this war that was waged for a decision she knows now Lexa wished she never had to make.

She remembers the first time she saw the Commander sitting regally in her throne, a girl barely a woman, only a few years older than her. She remembers the way Lexa twirled her dagger and watched her out of the corner of her eyes, evaluating but also curious. She remembers the raw, terrifying beauty of Lexa’s rage etched across her face when Clarke brought her to the dropship that became a graveyard for both their people, and the hard fury and cold disappointment when she rose through the dropship’s hatch to see Lincoln dead across the floor. She remembers the awe that barely touched her glinting, inscrutable green eyes when Lincoln gasped awake at the hit of electricity from her mother’s shock-stick.

She remembers the taste of Lexa’s lips the first time the Heda kissed her, the bold touch of soft warmth and the brush of Lexa’s nose against her own before Clarke pushed her away. She remembers Lexa’s broken voice in the long, heavy shadow of Mount Weather when she turned her back for the first and last time on Clarke. She remembers the way Lexa sobbed when Clarke did the same to her, a little more than a year ago, in her squat little building in Polis. And she remembers the year she spent avoiding Lexa, only to be carried back to her one way or another for each of Lexa’s heats. She remembers the progression of their slow, halting relationship each and every time Clarke satisfied them, until Clarke halted their progress with the single worst decision of her life.

There will never be another winter when a scout races through a blizzard to tell Clarke she’s needed in TonDC. There will never be another winter when Clarke arrives only to find her omega is in heat and that is the reason she needs her. There will never be another Harvest Festival in Polis when Clarke arrives only to find that the only attraction in the city worth seeing is Lexa, sprawled across her bed and staring at Clarke wantonly, or spread across the council table rolling her hips into Clarke’s hand, or seated in her throne, eyes flickering in the firelight, with a faint, distant smile on her lips or a blush in her cheeks for being called Commander.

There will never be another morning when Clarke wakes up with Lexa wrapped in her arms, and Lexa’s warm, sweet breath in the hollow of her throat.

Something in Clarke breaks. She collapses into herself, her sobs so thick, so heavy, so wracked, she can no longer breathe, and what she does after she falls asleep that night can hardly be constituted as living. It can hardly be described as surviving. She feels as if the light in her has gone out, and the darkness that consumes her is empty and unending.

Though Lexa had never been far from Clarke’s mind, Clarke starts to see her everywhere. For the first time in years, she picks up pencil and paper and starts to draw. At first, all she draws are pieces of Lexa: the long, elegant column of her neck; the soft burn of her expressive eyes; the uptick of a smile, just touching the corner of her mouth. The pieces grow, become studies of Lexa’s body: the full curve of Lexa’s back with her arm over the hilt of a sword; whole expressions playing subtle and secret across her face; her chin tipped back to reveal her straining neck, shoulders and chest with her braids draped messily over them. Clarke collects these pieces in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and on the nights her loneliness and her regret grow too thick for her to endure, she brings them out again, stares through tear-streaked eyes, and tries to pretend that she does not live in a world without the woman she loves. She fails, and the collection grows.

The new Heda is a child, barely ten summers, and is brought to visit them for a week in the first spring since Lexa’s death. Clarke wonders if Lexa was anything like her when she was the same age, gangly limbed and wide-eyed and scared. This Heda has brown eyes and a wide smile, and Clarke wonders how long it will take for her people to beat that smile out of her. When Mona is invited to sit in on their Council, Clarke hurts, because she is only ten and the discussion around the table is whether they should send an extra supply of gauze and antibiotics to Polis during the next tithe for the wounded warriors still recovering from the war. She hurts, because Kane and Bellamy both vote against it, and it is only Clarke’s ultimate overriding decision that will see Polis equipped with just a little more in terms of healthcare for the men and women that risked their lives to stop the northern invaders from sweeping through Trikru territory to protect among them a clan that wouldn’t even fight by their side.

She hurts, because she sees a little of Lexa’s carefully constructed stoicism in the girl’s big brown eyes, and the way she leans back in her chair and simply watches. She sees how deeply this little girl feels, the way Lexa felt deeply, how it makes her vulnerable the way it made Lexa vulnerable, how the masks they constructed for themselves to protect their generous hearts are so similar. She still misses Lexa every day, and the hollow ache in her heart won’t heal over. Instead, it grows deeper, and Clarke feels it keenly with this miniature reminder of everything she’s lost.

The new Heda is a quick study, but there is a regent in her place making ultimate decisions until Mona is old enough and strong enough to reclaim authority over her people. Clarke is grateful, because this new regent has a knack for public relations, and angry because the regent publicly denounces Lexa’s decision years ago to take President Wallace’s deal and leave Clarke and her captured Sky People behind. She knows the grounders don’t care that Lexa’s decision haunted her for the rest of her life, and that it would only tarnish Lexa’s memory as their Heda if they knew exactly why. Still, that Lexa’s decision to save her people continues to be discussed disgusts Clarke immensely, but it does the trick, and the previously bitter, wary relationship between the Sky People and the Trikru begins to mend and strengthen.

And it is that announcement that sets Clarke thinking again about the decision that had made it impossible to mate the woman she loved. She still hates it, still resents it. But she loves Lexa, and the duality of those feelings, their ability to coexist, brings Clarke to the heartbreaking realization that the one does not diminish the other. It breaks Clarke to realize she could have loved and mated Lexa without ever condoning Lexa’s betrayal. It breaks Clarke to realize that hating a decision Lexa once made does not mean she cannot love the woman that made it.

When fall arrives again, and it’s time for the Harvest Festival, Clarke sends Kane and Bellamy alone to Polis to handle any dealings between the Sky People and the seven remaining clans in the old Coalition. At first, no one questions her refusal to go herself. Her restrained but passionate relationship to the old Heda is too commonly known for anyone to wonder long at the reason. But as one missed Festival becomes two, three, four, her appointed emissaries begin to worry, then resist.

When the fifth Harvest Festival since Lexa’s death arrives, Camp Jaha is no longer a ramshackle camp constructed of the Ark’s debris and a few mud-houses. It is a small city, with sturdy log cabins and a small market of its own. The region’s best hospital is here, run under Abby’s expert management, and grounders come for miles to be treated there for everything, from sprained ankles and hunting accidents to life-ending illnesses. Kane has secured wide swathes of the surrounding land for more farming, and a permanent road is built with cobblestones to their closest neighbors in TonDC. Clarke’s single drawer of sketches has become two, and the partial drawings of Lexa have become complete images. Bellamy, Abby, Kane, and even Raven and Octavia all insist that Clarke leave this year, that she take a break from running the city and scraping Lexa’s face into every portable, storable surface she can find, and go to the Harvest Festival.

Clarke doesn’t want to go to Polis. The last time she was there was the last time she saw Lexa, and the memories that haunt its streets ache deeply enough when she is far away in Camp Jaha. She doesn’t want to think about how much more deeply they will burn when physical reminders of everything she had then and could have had now stand unchanged around her. But her mother, Kane and Bellamy are all insistent. She’s been locked up in Camp Jaha too long and needs a vacation. And it will be good for the other leaders to see the Heda of the Sky People again, and to be reminded that Clarke is still strong, despite her mate’s death.

So Clarke goes. She aches every step of the journey, dreads spending two weeks at the grounder capital without its only attraction. Her eyes water at the sight of the massive steel gate of the city, and she holds her breath as they pass through it, afraid of breathing too deeply and not smelling Lexa’s rich earthy scent. She unpacks her bags in the same room she stayed in the first and last time she was in Polis, and reluctantly joins Bellamy and his new mate for a walk in Polis’s downtown market.

She sees a flash of familiar brown braids, but they sink into the crowds, and though Clarke’s heart aches, she knows Lexa is dead, and it can’t be her.

She sees a glint of deep, impenetrable green, but the face she longs to see she knows is ash and dust, and averts her eyes to preserve the image of the Lexa she remembers on the insides of her eyelids instead.

She hears a shout that tears at her heart, because it is Lexa’s voice, but Lexa is _dead_ and Clarke should never have come to Polis because the memories that haunt her fill her and eat her up from the inside out. The squat building that used to be Lexa’s house then is now the home of little Mona, whose smile is a little dimmer in the five years since Clarke has last seen her. The massive throne that once made Lexa look bigger than life now makes Mona seem small and young by comparison.

Her heart bleeds. She shrinks away from her friends and darts down a busy alley in an attempt to find her way back to their quarters, to solitude and a bottle of whiskey and her bittersweet memories.

She turns a corner, expecting to find herself under the bridge that marks the entryway into the Sky People’s temporary residence. But the sky is blocked by a high black ceiling. The heat is sweltering, and Clarke’s skin burns the way it used to whenever she stepped into Lexa’s room during one of her omega’s heats.

Blades glitter along the walls, savage but beautiful tools of war. A massive anvil sweats near the center, and a burning forge shimmers in the unbearable heat a few feet away. There’s an empty stool, a huge bucket of blackening water, and hammers of all sizes range the waxed wood railing around the roaring, blistering fire of a blacksmith’s shop. It looks empty, and Clarke sighs in frustration at herself, wondering at what made her take such an obvious wrong turn, then turns to leave.

“Klark.”

_Please stay._

A memory rises from the packed dirt floor, grabs at Clarke’s feet and holds her there. Her knees lock, but they are weak and wobbly and Clarke thinks they might buckle. It’s Lexa’s voice, and though Clarke has not heard it in nearly six years, Clarke will never forget it. She’ll never forget the way Lexa’s tongue clicked over the vowels in her name. She will never forget the fragility with which she breathed the single spoken syllable.

“Klark.”

Her voice calls again and it’s not _fair_ because she’s been seeing and hearing and feeling Lexa everywhere since she’s arrived and her heart aches for the woman she wishes she mated and loved before she went to war and died. Clarke can’t breathe, can’t suck the smoky air into her lungs, because her chest has constricted and tightened to an unbearable degree. She’s hollow, and pain ricochets like a bullet in her empty steel insides.

Calloused fingers touch her arm. It’s still hot enough outside that Clarke isn’t wearing a jacket, and the gentle caress has her shuddering. Salt burns in her eyes, because the touch is Lexa’s, the voice is Lexa’s, but Clarke knows that when she turns around, the face she will see will not be the one she so desperately needs.

Someone sucks in a deep breath from behind her. “Beja, ai niron,” _please, my love_ , “turn around.”

She has learned Trigedasleng in the years following Lexa’s death, and recognizes the endearment as one Lexa used in reference to her so long ago, before Clarke ever guessed its meaning. It pulls at something inside her, so fiercely it _hurts_.

So she turns.

Her hair is loose, and looks lighter like this, chestnut more than brown, when it’s not in braids. Dappled green eyes glitter in the forge’s burning light, and her lips are as full as Clarke remembers. But there is a scar stretching from her eyebrow to the top of her cheek and her shoulders are fuller, broader now.

When she takes another tentative step closer to Clarke, Clarke notices a heavy limp in her gait and the cane clutched in her right hand. She leans heavily on it, like she cannot even maintain her balance without it.

Clarke realizes she hasn’t breathed once since she stepped inside the forge, perhaps since she set foot in the city, and releases the breath she’s been holding without knowing it. It’s choked, thick, and when Clarke breathes in again, her heart stops dead in her chest.

Clarke’s alpha notes are gone, but the scent is still all Lexa. All earth and growing things and warmth and life, and the salt stinging her eyes drips down her cheeks. This is not real. This _can’t_ be real. Anger and pain and deep, unbearable longing wring her still heart, and Clarke knows that when she reaches out to touch her, she will shimmer away, a cruel mirage in the forge’s dense, stifling heat.

But she doesn’t fade. Warmth greets Clarke’s fingertips, she cups Lexa’s cheek with a hand and Lexa leans into it, long-lashed eyes falling shut. A soft, inaudible sigh brushes the inside of Clarke’s wrist. The pressure of Lexa’s hand on her arm intensifies, and Clarke finds herself being pulled into a powerful embrace.

She thinks she must have fallen asleep the moment she finished unpacking her bags. Or else, she died somewhere on the way, and her soul doesn’t know it yet, but Lexa’s soul in the afterlife has come to find her. She doesn’t care either way, because Lexa is here, warm and solid and so, _so_ real.

“Klark.”

Clarke shudders at the hard click of Lexa’s tongue on the consonants of her name, on the softness surrounding the single voiced syllable, like it is somehow precious and fragile. Her arms wind around Lexa, tug her in closer, and Clarke falls apart into the crook of Lexa’s neck, pressing wet kisses over and over again into the spot where Lexa’s scent is spilling warm and sweet into her flaring nostrils. She wants this so badly, has been wanting this so badly, and buys into the fantasy of Lexa standing in front of her, holding her, with all that’s left of her mangled, damaged heart. She knows that when this fantasy is over, the heavily beating organ in her chest will shatter into so many pieces it will cease to exist, and Clarke with it. And somehow, Clarke is not surprised to realize she’s perfectly okay with that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW - I am the far more merciful between me and Flynn. She wanted Lexa's death to be the cliffhanger in the last chapter. It was my ultimate decision that it was overkill that saved you from a far worse fate than "She doesn't see Lexa again for many years." She loves your tears and pain. Just sayin'.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Serious love to all of you. We're coming to the end of the story here, just a couple chapters left by my reckoning. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the incredible 1k+ kudos! I foresee a very fluffy gift in your futures. <3

“Klark.”

She is amazed at the reception she gets from her alpha. She is amazed to see her alpha here at all. But Klark is crying into the crook of her neck and her arms are so tight and warm around her Leksa is melting, and she thinks she _has_ died, she _did_ die, all those years ago in layers of snow and ice and blood and her soul has finally found heaven.

But Klark still has not said a thing, and Leksa aches to hear her voice.

“Klark, please. Say something,” she whispers, face buried in her alpha’s shoulder, but she knows that even if it’s muffled, Klark will hear her and understand her. Her hand slips from Klark’s arm to wrap around Klark’s waist and rises up her spine to feel the strain and tension that lives in Klark’s hard, tight muscles. She wants to smooth that tension away, but even now, even with Klark’s hot tears soaking into her skin, Leksa is afraid that it is not her place, not her right, not her privilege.

When Klark finally speaks, her words are broken and slurred, and Leksa’s heart shatters in her chest.

“How – how is this possible?” There is disbelief and fear strung along between the words and Leksa hates the note of doubt still tangible in Klark’s voice. “They told me you died. They told me you killed the Ice Queen, and then you died.”

When Klark pulls away, Leksa realizes she has been leaning her full weight on her, and stumbles against her cane. A stab of agony races through her knee, spikes up and down her leg and Leksa flinches and allows Klark to scramble to help her stand again. Not because she needs Klark’s help, but because it feels so good to have it.

“Sha, niron,” _yes, love_ , “it’s true. The Commander Spirit left me and now I am just… plain old Leksa.” Leksa can’t help the bitterness of her tone. Even if ‘plain old Leksa’ suits her better than ‘Heda Leksa’ ever did, and even if she is glad to finally be rid of the yolk her people placed around her neck until she died. It hurts to see Mona in the streets, hiding from her mentors and playing hooky from her training sessions. It hurts to see Mona sitting in her throne looking scared and small. It hurts to see Mona on her building’s rooftop deep into the night, practicing her stances and her parries and her thrusts until her arms are so heavy and sore she can barely lift them and her head is nodding with exhaustion.

It hurts, because she knows what Mona will become at the end of it, and Leksa is sad to see the life stripped out of another child for the sake of a nation.

Klark stares at her, misty-eyed and confused, and Leksa sighs, tugs her gently along to the back of the forge and the tiny, cramped room she is allowed by the forge’s master. All her worldly possessions are here: her old oak-handled dagger, her war-horse’s dented, tarnished bit, a few furs and changes of clothes, two well-read books, and a bed. Even with so little, her room is crowded and small, and Leksa ducks her head in shame but she needs to be alone with her alpha, because what she is about to explain is too hard and too scary to risk customers interrupting.

She doesn’t get a chance. Before Leksa is even finished pushing the heavy door shut, Klark’s hands are snaking around her belly and Klark’s warm scent is enveloping her. Klark’s mouth is on her ear, her jaw, her neck, her shoulder and Klark’s firm warmth is pressed against her back. Leksa shudders, her tears are jammed under the lump stuck in her throat and need and longing throb in every muscle of her body. She’s been hollow for so long, and Klark is filling her up again, even with the barest of touches and kisses, the soft sounds of her panicked breathing, the heaviness of her alpha scent. Leksa turns haltingly, clumsily, in Klark’s arms, aching to see her alpha’s bright, eternally blue eyes and taste her lips on her tongue. She wants all her senses to be consumed by Klark, needs to be consumed by Klark, and all her hesitant, painful explanations can wait.

She is not in heat, but her skin burns where Klark touches her. And when Klark lifts her to carry her over to the bed, Leksa wraps her strong leg instinctively around Klark’s waist and struggles to do the same with the other. Pain wracks it, but Leksa is insensitive to it while Klark’s powerful body embraces her. Leksa does not even need to help her, she just cards her fingers through warm blonde hair and settles compliantly into the hard narrow bed Klark lays her on.

Klark is heavier than she remembers. She’s gentler than she remembers too, reverent as she peels Leksa’s thin, frayed shirt off and plucks at the buttons that hold her bra in place. Skin meets skin as Leksa lifts Klark’s top and slides her hands underneath. Klark presses kisses along every inch of Leksa’s throat and Leksa hums in approval, because all of this is so beautifully familiar and so wonderfully new at the same time. Klark’s top slides off as she drifts down to trail kisses along Leksa’s collarbone, over the swell of each of her breasts, and Leksa shivers because she never thought she’d feel Klark’s mouth caress her nipples again, but Klark is already sucking one in and painting circles around it with her tongue.

Leksa arches up into her while she unhooks Klark’s bra. She shudders when Klark’s bare breasts graze her stomach.

Klark is slow and methodical, mapping and remapping every warm shuddering inch of Leksa’s body. At first, Leksa is shy. She knows she is not the same woman Klark left behind so many years ago. But Klark spends long minutes kissing and nipping and nuzzling the ragged scar between her ribs, where an arrow pierced her back to front in her final battle with the Azkwin, and strokes over her shattered and malformed right knee as she tugs Leksa’s heavy layered pants down around her ankles. She kisses a trail down Leksa’s belly, traces her hips with her tongue and drifts lower, paying close attention to her now mismatched thighs and loving both with equal intensity.

When Klark has kissed her way down Leksa’s calves, ankles, feet, she starts again on her way up. Leksa is bare and naked beneath her, but Klark is still half dressed, and helps her with one hand when Leksa’s fingers fumble clumsily over the button of her pants.

Every inch of Leksa is kissed and touched and fondled by the time Klark’s mouth finally closes over Leksa’s lips. Leksa kisses her back and tastes salt on her tongue. Klark is still crying, she never stopped, but her tears are silent and Leksa thinks that if this is a dream she never wants to wake up. Klark pulls away after a long minute, and they lie shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, ankle to ankle. Leksa has never felt warm like this.

She smooths away the tears still tracking down Klark’s cheeks and smiles at the way Klark tilts her face into her hand. She wants to tell her she loves her, she thinks Klark might even say it back, but feeling her close, cradling her face, staring into twin pools of misty blue eyes right now is enough. Anything more might be too much.

Klark bends, brushes her mouth over Leksa’s lips again, and ghosts a soft, warm kiss into them that melts Leksa’s heart and pieces the broken shards back together. Warm, calloused fingers trail down her sides and Leksa breathes out a heavy gasp as they flutter along the inside of her thigh and dip into the folds around her entrance. Klark’s kiss deepens, grows a little more insistent, she finds the moisture trapped in the center and brings it out, sweeps it delicately in a line up to her clit and butterflies erupt in a mad tango in the pit of Leksa’s stomach.

For a long while, Klark’s touch is light, teasing, painting circles around her clit before dipping back down to collect more of Leksa’s arousal only to stroke it again in a line up and around the sensitive nub. Leksa’s fingers dig into Klark’s hips where she holds her, but she stays still otherwise despite the hammer of her heart, allows her alpha to love her with her hands and comes apart under them slowly.

“Klark.”

It is a plea, broken and ragged, and Klark catches it with her lips and presses it back into Leksa’s tender, swollen mouth. Leksa’s hips rise slightly, inviting Klark inside, and Klark dips a single digit in, curls it, and rubs a soft, sensitive spot against her front wall. Warmth unfurls along every inch of Leksa’s body, pleasure and a grateful kind of bliss throb against Klark’s talented fingers. That single firm touch leaves Leksa trembling and steals the very breath from her lungs. She’s coming undone at a marvelous pace, and Klark is a miracle as she leans down to smooth kisses where old bruises faded years ago and works another finger inside her.

“Klark.”

Her mouth forms the shape of her alpha’s name, but there is little air left in her lungs to give life to it. Klark strokes her front wall with two fingers, rolls them inside, fondles the nub of her clit with her thumb and nibbles into her pulse point with gentle, nipping teeth, and Leksa falls apart completely. A low, deep-throated moan of pleasure rumbles from somewhere deep in her chest. Her hips roll into Klark’s hand even as she rolls into her alpha on the narrow bed, eyes squeezed shut in concentration and her mouth parted and searching, searching for Klark’s. Klark’s fingers carry her through her orgasm, thrusting gently in and out to draw out Leksa’s pleasure for as long as she can.

When Klark kisses her, Leksa whimpers. She can taste her skin on Klark’s lips – no blood, no mating bite, just her own scent rich on the edges of Klark’s teeth – but now there’s time and Leksa is more concerned with the fingers pulling every drop of orgasm out of her. Her hand cups Klark’s between her legs and her breath hitches at the way Klark’s whole body responds and shudders into her. Leksa wants to be on top and simply sliding a trembling leg over Klark’s is enough to communicate it. Klark’s unoccupied arm winds around her, holds her, lifts her, and Klark slides under.

“I want to taste you,” Leksa mumbles, lips uncoordinated and tongue clumsy in her mouth. Klark smiles into her, smooths the wild, unbraided hair from her face, and Leksa whimpers again as her alpha’s fingers slide out of her and into Klark’s mouth instead. When Klark kisses her, Leksa can taste herself on her alpha’s tongue, and it sends a wild heat skittering under her skin. None of this feels completely real, but Klark is warm and solid beneath her, and her hands are gentle as she helps Leksa slide down to the gap between her thighs.

Leksa is not in heat, so though the bud of Klark’s clit is stiff and straining in its hood, it does not lengthen and swell. Leksa licks her lips, tastes herself on them again and bends to breathe Klark’s bright, sunny scent in. Klark’s thighs rise around her, her calves wrap around her back, her legs pull her in and hold her close in place of her arms. Leksa’s heart is thundering in her chest when she leans in to swipe her tongue through Klark’s narrow slit and thin folds.

The moan that shudders through Klark is echoed in Leksa’s throat. Klark tastes like Leksa imagined her so many years ago: like sunshine and buttercups, warm and bright, and the taste lingers on her tongue long after she turns her attention to the straining bundle of nerves at the top. She slides a finger inside slowly, gently, aware of the uncomfortable grunt Klark gives to be penetrated like this. But Klark lets her, and Leksa draws her alpha’s wetness out while she laps and sucks her way down again. It’s so different from the way they’ve fucked before that Leksa becomes keenly aware that they are not fucking now. Or at least, not just fucking. This time, it’s more. This time, they’re making love the way Leksa pretended and dreamed and imagined for hours while she waited for Klark to arrive and help her through her heats.

Klark prefers Leksa’s tongue to her finger. Leksa feels the way she shudders under her mouth, so she slides her tongue through thin folds and pushes past them gently. The ring of muscle around Klark’s entrance is far tighter than her own, and her tongue can barely make it through. But flavor bursts on the inside and Leksa feels Klark come undone with her. Strong fingers wind through her curly hair and Leksa arches her head up into them while she sucks Klark’s clit back in between her lips. She bobs slowly between tip and slit, giving and taking at the rhythm Klark’s hands set in her hair. When Klark releases, Leksa licks every drop that soaks into her folds and sucks it down until there is nothing left and Klark is a trembling, shuddering mess in her mouth.

Leksa has the sun shining inside her when Klark pulls her back up again, and the deep hollow in her heart is full of light. She settles against Klark’s chest, in Klark’s arms, and drops her head into the crook of Klark’s neck. Her lips find Klark’s pulse point easily, immediately, like they never left, and she kisses and nips at it like she wants to bite, but can and will wait. Klark’s fingers flutter up and down her spine in appreciation.

“Tell me this is real,” Klark’s voice is soft and cracked in the dimness of her room, “tell me how this is possible.” The words tremble in the air between them, wedge themselves in the remaining cracks in Leksa’s heart. Leksa kisses up the fresh trail of tears tracking down Klark’s cheeks, up to her mouth, and drops a tiny kiss on the tip of her nose.

“It’s real, Klark,” she murmurs, slides her nose against Klark’s and kisses her lips again. She knows Klark can taste herself on her tongue when Klark growls with pleasure. “I’m here. Feel me,” Leksa kisses her alpha’s cheek, takes Klark’s hand in one of her own and brings it up to cup her jaw, and their fingers lace, “kiss me,” she breathes into Klark’s lips as their mouths meet in a soft kiss. Klark whimpers and Leksa kisses her again. “I’m here, ai niron.” _My love._

“How?”

It is a question Klark already asked, and Leksa sighs softly as she nuzzles back into the crook of Klark’s neck. “After I slew the Azkwin,” Leksa raises her head to check that Klark understands who she means, and Klark gives a minute nod, “after I slew the Azkwin, I succumbed to my injuries. They say I collapsed in the snow; that I drowned in a pool of her blood and mine, and in melted ice.”

Klark gives a violent shudder, and Leksa presses another warm kiss to the lump bobbing in her throat before going on. “They say I was dead for nearly ten minutes. The Commander Spirit left me, but Indra refused to let me stay dead.”

Klark turns in her arms, bluer-than-blue eyes wet and spilling over with salty tears. “But you’re here now?” her voice is strained, Leksa can hear how hard it is for her to speak around the pain jamming her windpipes. She smooths a hand over her alpha’s chest and kisses the pulse point spilling Klark’s sweet scent into the air around them. “She used the lightning rods your Fisa Abby, your Nomon, brings new life in. I threw up blood and water. Then she says I slept for the full three weeks it took to return me to Polis. And I am no longer Heda.”

“Does it bother you that you’re not Heda anymore?” Klark’s eyes take on an intensity as she looks up into Leksa’s, and Leksa smiles, because she thinks it’s obvious, but apparently, to her sweet, clueless alpha, it isn’t.

“Dying was the second best thing that has ever happened to me,” Leksa answers softly, smiling again as she places a soft, warm kiss on Klark’s lips. She knows she does not have to explain to Klark what the best thing that has ever happened to her is when she feels Klark’s mouth stretch into a smile.

Then Klark’s fingers tangle in Leksa’s hair, and they spend a few long minutes simply pressing kisses and breathing soft, happy sighs into each other’s lips. Leksa feels the tension slide out of Klark’s shoulders, feels her alpha relax beneath her, and revels in it and in their shared nakedness, in their bare skin pressed close together.

Klark tenses only one more time that afternoon, and only for a few brief minutes. Their foreheads are touching, their kiss-swollen lips centimeters apart and their eyelashes brush together with their closeness. Leksa sweeps her thumbs through the last, straggling tears trailing every now and again along Klark’s cheeks and the silence around them is comfortable and light.

So when Klark’s shoulders tighten and a frown furrows across her forehead, Leksa lifts her face and brushes a kiss along the little line between her eyebrows in an attempt to smooth it away with her lips.

“What is it, Klark?” she asks patiently, softly. Now that Klark is here, holding her, loving her, and she is no longer Heda, Leksa feels they have all the time in the world. She feels she has everything.

“It’s been years, Lexa,” Klark falters, her fingers dig a little tighter into Leksa’s skin, pausing in their slow, soothing, up and down stroke along Leksa’s spine, “I never knew. You never came to Camp Jaha, sent a letter, radioed in… nothing.” Klark’s voice fades at the end, but Leksa can hear the question in her statement anyway.

“I’m sorry, Klark,” she whispers, regret bitter on her tongue, “I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know you’d care.”

She feels Klark’s jaw clench under her fingertips, and it hurts her to see Klark in this much pain. But the doubt and uncertainty she remembers feeling before Klark entered her forge had been crippling, and every time Leksa had considered contacting her, the possibility that Klark wouldn’t care enough to come, to even respond, had stayed her hand. Now, knowing how much time she wasted for her fear… she shivers into her alpha and sighs her apology heavy into Klark’s skin. “I’m so sorry, ai niron,” she whispers, voice cracking under the weight of her regret. Klark’s arms around her tighten, her face tilts up and Leksa feels a kiss stroked carefully against her jaw.

“No, Lexa,” Klark’s words soak into Leksa’s skin, warm and low and rough with emotion, and it sends a shudder of relief running down her spine, “ _I’m_ the one who’s sorry. I care. I always cared,” another kiss, and Leksa lets go of the fear and the doubt riddled in her heart, and feels the cracks left in them heal just a little more, “I will always care. I’m sorry I ever let you think any different.”

Leksa buries her face in the warm expanse of Klark’s neck, rubs her nose against her alpha’s fluttering pulse and breathes Klark in deeply. She feels her own tears building behind her eyes, feels her chest swell with joy, feels her heart grow so big she thinks she might burst. She wants to tell Klark how much she loves her, but the words just aren’t big enough, strong enough, to accurately communicate how she feels. They are ants to the universe she holds in her chest. So instead she licks into Klark’s pulsing heartbeat in her neck and closes her teeth around it. He heart soars when Klark returns the gesture, with a little added prickling pressure, and growls softly into her skin, “Mine.”

This time, Leksa doesn’t have to pretend, and she doesn’t have to imagine. The sunlight inside her is glowing through her skin.

A loud, angry knock interrupts their moment, and Leksa sags a little into Klark’s arms. She knows who and what it is and wishes for the first time since she died that she could yell for her warriors to make him go away. She doesn’t want to get up, doesn’t want to leave the warm safety of Klark’s arms. But if she doesn’t, he’ll come in, and even now, she can’t bear to be so vulnerable in front of anyone but her alpha. Not to mention that they are both naked.

She growls as she rises, scrambling for her cane and for the sheets to cover her bare body, and yanks the door open enough to wedge herself into the crack and prevent him from seeing inside. His meaty fist is raised to slam into the door again, and from the deep darkness of the forge, Leksa discovers that it is night time and hours have passed since she brought Klark to her room.

“ _Get your lazy ass out of bed!_ ” he growls, his face flushed with his anger and his fists curling under his armpits in an attempt to quell the irritation crawling across his features. Ollon is not a bad master, but he lacks patience and understanding, and dislikes returning to his forge in the evenings he is away to find tasks unfinished and the forge’s fire untended and spluttering weakly. His crafts are popular in Polis, and his schedule is tight to finish and deliver the orders listed on dozens of sheets of paper at any given time. “ _I thought you broke yourself of this habit of sleeping late._ ” He can smell that she is not in heat, and it has been years since her body healed enough to allow her to return to normal sleeping habits. Leksa clenches her jaw, but it is not her place to argue. She knows that, as much as she wants to return to Klark still stretched on her bed behind her, she has a responsibility she cannot allow herself to ignore.

But warm hands scrape around her belly again, and Klark’s chin rolls over her shoulder. She can smell Klark’s rich musk, and fly-away strands of Klark’s mussed hair tickle her cheek. Ollon takes a surprised step back and frowns, because everyone knows who Heda Klark is and knows that she was once almost mated to Leksa. But it has been years since anyone in Polis has last seen her – not since Leksa was still somebody and the Skaikru were still only tentative allies.

“ _My fault_.”

Shock jars Leksa for a brief moment, and Klark’s arms around her tighten reactively until Leksa relaxes again. Klark’s Trigedasleng is accented, but clear, and Leksa remembers again that it has been years since she’s last seen Klark. Of course Klark learned their language. And her responsibilities now seem paltry and unimportant with Klark’s warm, firm body pressed against her back.

“No, Heda Kom Skaikru,” Ollon replies falteringly in Gonasleng as he recovers from his shock, “I’m sorry for interrupting. I didn’t know you were here.” He stares at Klark for a few more, long minutes, and Leksa can’t blame him because Klark is beautiful, and glows in the dark like a star in the velvet night sky, and because Klark’s grip around Leksa’s waist is possessive and Leksa can feel the sudden increase in dominant alpha pheromones pouring from her and overpowering Ollon’s beta senses. Finally, the enormous blacksmith turns, dark eyes watching over his shoulder as he picks up the tasks Leksa never finished, and Klark pulls them both back only to close the door between them and him.

Leksa turns, grins cheekily at Klark, and laughs softly when Klark picks her up and carries her back to the tiny, narrow, hard bed that takes up more than half of Leksa’s room.

“Back to bed, _niron_ ,” Klark’s order is soft, and Leksa can hear the smile in Klark’s voice when she gives it. She drops Leksa’s cane at the foot of the bed, slides in under Leksa, and pulls the covers around them both.

 

* * *

  

Clarke is still not quite sure this is real. She feels Lexa’s heart beating under her palm, feels the warmth radiating from her omega, skin to skin. She hears Lexa’s voice, tastes her scent, smells her arousal and her sweat and the soap she uses in her hair. She smells a little more like fire and smoke now than she used to, but Clarke thinks that’s a result of working in a forge, or living in one at least. It’s new. Clarke thinks she likes it.

She runs her hands along Lexa’s shattered knee again, rubs her fingers into each of Lexa’s thighs, exploring their differences with curiosity and reverence. Lexa watches her, mossy green eyes as impenetrable as ever, but as Clarke’s hands drift up to cup her ass instead, she can see the shadow of a smile creep into the corners of her mouth. Her hands wander higher up, she slides her thumb along the patchy scar in Lexa’s waist, then runs her fingers along Lexa’s spine, and the motion seems to relax Lexa completely. Clarke’s eyes slide shut, she wants to focus every nerve in her body on the way Lexa slumps into her, in the texture of Lexa’s hair against her cheek, in the flare of Lexa’s warm breath across her collarbone.

She’s not quite sure this is real. But god – it feels real. And she wants it to be real, so badly. And though they’re both emotionally exhausted, just exhausted in general, Clarke’s not ready to sleep yet. She’s not ready to let Lexa sleep yet. She needs to hear Lexa’s voice like she needs air to breathe. More than she needs air to breathe.

“So you’re a blacksmith now?” Clarke whispers into her omega’s hair. She revels in the tickle of Lexa’s mouth against her chest, especially because she knows the uptick at the corner of Lexa’s lips is a smile.

“I am an apprentice,” Lexa says, then pauses briefly, as if re-evaluating her words, “an assistant. This is Ollon’s shop. I pay my rent and board by assisting him in it.”

“Ah, the great and powerful Heda Lexa. No skill is beyond her.” Clarke is teasing, she grins at the way Lexa swats at her arm. She kisses Lexa’s hair and sucks in a breath, because she shouldn’t be this lucky. She doesn’t deserve this second chance. But her second chance is lying in her arms, her weight both strange and familiar at once, grinning and swatting at her in ways Clarke never imagined Lexa knew how to do.

But this is Lexa. There is just enough stoic commander there to make Clarke believe.

“My father was a blacksmith. He taught me the craft before I became Heda. I never forgot.”

Then Lexa lifts her head, and the expression in her eyes is so soft, so vulnerable, it makes Clarke’s heart hurt. “Klark,” her voice, low and serious, burrows deep into Clarke’s warming heart, “I am not Heda. I can give you everything now.”

Clarke can hear the words Lexa’s not saying. She won’t make the same mistake she made last time.

The pain of a true mating bite is immense. Her teeth must bite through flesh and muscle, dig deep, and Clarke will not cause her omega any more pain than she’s already experienced. Only the pleasure of a satisfied heat will be enough to overcome it, and Clarke knows it’s best to wait until Lexa is in heat, until her knot is buried deep in her omega and they share the overpowering pleasure of a shared orgasm. No matter how impatient she is to bite her mark deep into Lexa's flesh.

But there are temporary fixes until Lexa’s heat rolls around. Clarke lifts her head to lick along Lexa’s neck in answer, hums in response to Lexa’s grateful whimper, and gently rolls to reverse their positions.

“How long until your next heat?” Clarke asks between the kisses and nips she trails across her lover’s collarbone to her breast.

“Winter,” Lexa answers shortly. She’s already gasping, already lifting her hips into Clarke’s and wrapping her good leg around Clarke’s waist. Clarke growls against the soft skin around Lexa’s nipple and sucks it in. _Too long_. But Clarke will bruise her mark into her omega’s neck like she did six years ago almost to the day, and she will keep bruising her mark into her omega’s neck until Lexa goes into heat. She will _not_ make the same mistake she made all those years ago.

Clarke takes her time again, because Lexa is beautiful and Clarke can’t help but marvel over every delicious inch of her. She can’t help but breathe her gratitude that Lexa is alive and here into every curve of bone and muscle and every warm, shiver of skin as Lexa writhes and mewls under her. She kisses her breasts, teases and tastes each nipple until they are both hard and straining under her mouth. She paints with her tongue every flexing muscle in Lexa’s abdomen in whispers and thanks and wishes she knows words will fail and bites gently into the rises of Lexa’s hip bones. Lexa’s fingers bury deep into Clarke’s hair, and each and every one of Lexa’s whimpers and moans sear themselves into Clarke’s beating heart.

“Klark.”

Clarke shudders. She never thought she’d hear Lexa’s voice click over the consonants in her name again, never thought she’d hear the reverent prayer Lexa breathes into the middle syllable. She hums in reply, licks lower, eases herself into the cradle of Lexa’s hips and sighs into warm, wet folds petaled open and waiting for her.

She smells of earth and growing things, tastes of cool shadows and warm sap-stained bark. Lexa sighs and curls into Clarke’s mouth, and Clarke drinks deeply, tongue probing for every drop of her omega’s desire, before licking up to suckle and tease her omega’s clit.

“Klark.”

A hard lump lodges itself in Clarke’s throat. She’s so overwhelmed by what she’s feeling, she wants to cry. Instead, she slips a finger along Lexa’s folds, coating it in slick arousal to help it slide more easily into Lexa’s hot, pulsing depths. One finger becomes two while she sucks and nips and strokes circles with her tongue and lips and teeth into Lexa’s clit, and by the time Clarke starts pumping her fingers slowly, Lexa is writhing wildly under her and panting her name over and over.

Clarke could come even without any stimulation, just to the sound of her omega’s voice as it runs over the syllables and consonants of her name.

And every push and pull of Clarke’s fingers draws out more delicious heat. When she feels Lexa’s inner walls begin to quiver, when she hears the whine in Lexa’s voice that tells her she’s on the edge, Clarke dips her head, withdraws her fingers, and buries her mouth into Lexa’s center. She drives her tongue past the wildly contracting muscle in Lexa’s entrance and moans at the way Lexa screams her name.

She sucks down the first rush of Lexa’s orgasm, and glides over Lexa as she replaces her tongue with her fingers again. Lexa’s arms fly around her, her neck arches up, and while Clarke carries her through every hard contraction of her release, she bites down just hard enough over Lexa’s throbbing pulse in her neck to leave a bruise that will last for days. Lexa’s breath catches, her hips jump into Clarke’s hand, and wet heat floods the palm.

Clarke holds her bite until Lexa’s hard contractions ease into aftershocks. She doesn’t remove her hand, only pumps it gently as she scrapes her tongue soothingly along the bruise under her teeth, and growls low and aggressive into the slope of her lover’s neck, “mine.”

The tears she’s been fighting break loose when Lexa rasps into her hair, “yours.”

She comes apart in Lexa’s arms, sobs into the mark she’s made in her omega’s skin, shudders into every aftershock she feels flutter around her fingers and into every stroke of Lexa’s hands through her hair. She doesn’t deserve this second chance. She knows she doesn’t deserve to hold Lexa again like this, to make love to her again like this, to knot and mate her when her next heat comes. But she will not make the same mistake she made last time. She says the words Lexa isn’t quite saying into the bruise flowering in the slope of Lexa’s shoulder and knows that no one has ever been so lucky as she when Lexa sighs them right back into her ear, “I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So - to Lordofdeathn, Lowiiie, Tipsy2 and Mindy (who called it almost to a T): nice prediction! Flynn and I had some great fun with ALL the comments (she loved being compared to hell especially), but that was some good thinking. Bask in your correct assumptions. It was very hard not to winky-face your posts, but that would have been spoilers.
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed the fluff! More answers to your plethora of questions coming your way on Monday!


	7. Chapter 7

Clarke thought she’d never get to fall asleep again with Lexa’s warmth tucked into her arms. She never thought she’d get to wake up to Lexa’s hair tickling her nose, to Lexa’s scent and skin and soft even breathing. She’s still not quite sure she can say she’s had that privilege yet, because Clarke does not fall asleep that night. At least, not for a long time, and when she does, it’s only for short periods. She keeps waking to check that Lexa’s really there, to kiss the back of her neck and smile before drifting off again. All of this is surreal, scary, unbelievable, and Clarke is terrified of how happy she is now and how devastated she will be in the morning, because a part of her is still convinced she’ll wake up alone in her own bed in Camp Jaha to find out it was all just a dream.

But she doesn’t. The heavy, cool darkness lifts into a sweet pastel morning, and Clarke wakes up again for the millionth time to find Lexa is still spooning into her, and Lexa’s warm, earthy scent is all around her. Wild, loose curls tickle her nose and Clarke’s chest feels so full it could burst. She wants to wake Lexa, to see her smile again and kiss her lips, taste her morning breath and see the sleepy green of her eyes when she opens them for the first time that day to find Clarke still beside her.

More than that though, she wants to wake Lexa and beg her to come back to Camp Jaha after the Harvest Festival is over. They have spent so much time apart – _too much time apart_ – and Clarke does not want to live another day without her omega by her side. She runs her thumb along Lexa’s scarred knuckles, breathes kisses into the nape of Lexa’s neck, nuzzles the sweet, warm spot where Lexa’s scent is strongest and laps at the bite she bruised into her omega’s skin the night before tenderly. She can’t wait until Lexa is in heat, can’t wait to bite her mark permanently into Lexa’s flesh, to claim her completely as her mate.

Lexa eventually wakes to golden light spilling through the narrow window above her bed and soaking the sheets in early autumn warmth. Her chestnut hair glows, and Clarke stifles a giggle to realize that the pattern of light in Lexa’s curls gives her a halo, and it’s almost enough to sober Clarke and strike fear in her heart, because halos are for angels, for the dead. But Lexa is alive and warm and _here_ , and she’s turning sleepily on the lumpy narrow mattress to face her. Clarke runs her fingers up and down Lexa’s spine, because she loves the way Lexa’s warm skin feels against her fingertips and because she knows Lexa finds it soothing.

“Good morning,” Lexa mumbles, a smile stretched across her lips, and nuzzles into the hollow of Clarke’s throat. Clarke’s voice catches, because it is so damn _good_ to feel Lexa’s breath and lips and nose rub across her skin there again. She squeezes her arms possessively around Lexa and kisses her temple in answer. There are no words for how _much_ Clarke feels in this moment. One of Lexa’s arms winds around her, and Clarke feels gentle fingers tug lazily through her hair. She sucks in a breath, forces herself to remember that this is real and it’s okay to be happy, and hums contentedly.

“How are you feeling?” Clarke asks after a while, desperate and anxious to hear Lexa’s voice again. She runs her finger over the bruise at the base of her omega’s neck and bends to kiss it softly again. She’s worried she’s caused her omega pain, but her worry is chased away by the smile she feels stretching across Lexa’s lips, pressed over her collarbone. Lexa nuzzles into her again, and Clarke’s eyes slide shut as another lump rises in her throat.

Lexa’s face tilts up to kiss it away. “Happy,” is her only, breathless answer, and Clarke tightens her arms around Lexa. She still has so many questions, but she’s afraid to ask them. She tries to organize them, tries to prioritize them and put them in words, while Lexa kisses a trail along her throat up her jaw to her ear and nibbles gently at her earlobe. It’s distracting in the most wonderful way, and Clarke won’t complain, even if her questions demand answers.

“Lexa –,” Clarke gasps into her lover’s hair as Lexa’s lips drift past her ear to the soft skin behind and her tongue licks teasingly. A whine spills from Clarke’s throat when Lexa stops abruptly, but Lexa only huffs out a short, quiet laugh and drops a light kiss where her tongue had been.

“Klark.”

Clarke shivers. Lexa’s tone is almost questioning, but there is something else hidden in the way she says Clarke’s name that echoes in Clarke’s gut and sends a pulse of want racing through her. Every question, every thought, in Clarke’s head is forgotten when Lexa’s rough, calloused fingers close over her nipple and pinch. “Save your questions for later,” Lexa husks into her ear, “for now, remind me that you’re here.”

Arousal slices hot and urgent in Clarke’s belly. She responds to her omega’s request with a deep growl, pushes Lexa onto her back and straddles her. She loves the way Lexa gasps into the nape of her neck, loves the way her omega’s hands roam across her back, loves the heat of her lover’s body trapped beneath hers. She loves the way Lexa’s good leg rises between hers, and loves the warm resistance of the top of Lexa’s thigh against her clit. Need floods her center, and as Clarke nips into the bite mark on Lexa’s neck, she rolls her hips to spread her want wet and hot over Lexa’s skin. Lexa moans, and Clarke snaps.

She pulls Lexa’s arms away, traps them over their heads against the pillow under one of her own. Lexa writhes beneath her, and Clarke growls into her omega’s throat. She struggles for a moment to open Lexa’s legs beneath her, and the way Lexa hooks her good leg around her hips sends another wave of desire spiraling madly into her throbbing clit. She wills it to extend, wills the shaft to grow, aches to bury herself deep in her omega’s cunt and claim her completely, but Lexa is not in heat and no amount of wishing will turn her clit into a cock. So Clarke scrapes her free hand down her lover’s body, parts the folds around Lexa’s entrance and slips her fingers through the gathering moisture there.

“Klark, please.”

Lexa’s whimper shivers against Clarke’s skin, her hips jump in an attempt to catch Clarke’s fingers, hook them, pull them inside. There is an answering pull pulsing in Clarke’s clit, and Clarke struggles to be gentle as she slides a finger inside. Slick, shuddering heat envelops the digit, and Clarke can’t stop the jerk of her hips that drives it further in.

“Klark!”

Lexa’s trapped hands beneath Clarke’s strain. Her omega’s body is arching against her weight, but Lexa’s leg around her hips tightens and holds her in place. Clarke knows her omega is strong enough to buck her off, push her away if that is what she really wants, but she doesn’t. She only flexes, resists just enough so Clarke can feel her, every part of her, strain with want. And it’s encouraging.

Clarke is growling again as she withdraws her finger only to work a second in, then a third. She aches to replace her fingers with her cock, aches to replace the bruise under her mouth with a bite. Slick velvet flutters around her fingers, Lexa’s voice whines into her ear, and Clarke lifts herself enough to look down at her omega even as she circles Lexa’s throbbing clit with the calloused pad of her thumb.

A sliver of gold-speckled green surrounds the endless black of Lexa’s dilated pupils. The omega’s eyes slide shut as her lips part and she arches up into Clarke, and Clarke pumps her hand into her lover’s cunt and rasps “mine,” as she lines her hips with Lexa’s to add a little extra driving pressure to each of her thrusts. She grinds her clit against the back of her hand and feels wetness spill across her knuckles from both sides.

“Yours –!” Lexa gasps, and jerks her hips into Clarke’s fingers desperately, “Please, Klark! Fuck me!”

The words still have the same power over Clarke as they always have. She tackles Lexa’s mouth with her own and starts a punishing rhythm with her fingers, driven by the steady, furious pump of her hips. Clarke’s clit grinds against the back of her hand while she fucks the omega she aches to mate, and every moan that rolls from Clarke’s chest is swallowed instantly by another of Lexa’s. She feels orgasm build between them, the hot silk of Lexa’s walls wrapped around her fingers flutter wildly and her front wall swells under her fingertips. Wet heat spills across her knuckles, a product of her own arousal as much as Lexa’s, and Clarke finds herself approaching climax far sooner than she intended to. But Lexa’s whole body is flexing and twisting beneath hers, firm and solid and strong, and Lexa’s hands trapped under her own are straining against her. Their kiss turns sloppy, teeth click against teeth, and scrape against swollen lips and searching tongues. Clarke loses her breath, and as the wild quiver of her omega’s cunt explodes into orgasm between her fingers, she loses her rhythm too.

Their mouths break apart. Lexa’s teeth close over her heartbeat. Prickling pressure turns to a bruising bite even as Clarke’s own mouth finds the bite at the base of Lexa’s neck, and the flood of Lexa’s orgasm between her fingers is doubled as she slams into her omega’s cunt one more time to find her own release. Lexa’s teeth over her neck do not loosen, Clarke sucks and laps gently at the bite she already made the night before and whimpers as she is swept away by the force of her climax. The pounding of Lexa’s heat wrapped around her fingers only intensifies it further.

They strain against each other, though Clarke’s restraining hand over Lexa’s loosens enough to allow the omega to circle her alpha with her arms and hold her close. Tears burn in the corners of Clarke’s eyes and Clarke whimpers again, because this _can’t_ be real, but it is, and she is _so_ grateful.

  

* * *

 

She aches to be filled by Klark’s cock. She aches to be split open around its girth, to feel Klark’s orgasm pound jet after jet of her come inside until she is full to bursting, aches to feel the heavy throb of her alpha’s knot cork her entrance and hold every drop of their orgasm, mixed together, inside. But she is not in heat, and Clarke’s rough fingers have to be enough.

She’s breathless. Her teeth tighten over Klark’s quaking pulse, and she laps her tongue over it soothingly. She knows she’s hurting her mate – _almost_ mate – by how hard she is biting, but she knows also that the pain is a relief. She knows it is an assertion that they are here, together, tangled in each other and pounding their releases in synchrony. She aches for Klark’s cock like she aches for her heat, but at least Klark’s teeth are where they belong, over her pulse and biting as hard as her alpha dares without hurting her too much. Klark shudders in the cage of her arms, and Leksa reluctantly releases her alpha’s neck only to lap at the flowering bruise soothingly.

“Mine,” Leksa whispers, voice breaking over the claim, and fights back the tears burning behind her eyes. They break free anyway, when Klark’s rough, raspy growl against her shoulder reasserts the claim: “Yours.”

Then Klark’s fingers begin to pump gently again, and her thumb smooths circles into Leksa’s throbbing clit, and her alpha carries her through the violent aftershocks of her orgasm until Leksa is a shuddering, quaking mess beneath her. She rains kisses along the delicious column of Klark’s neck, paying extra deliberate attention to the reddening bruise over Klark’s pulse, while Klark laps at the painful bruise on her own.

Leksa stills her alpha’s gentle movements as the aftershocks begin to spike into arousal. She wants to make love to Klark again, she never wants to stop. But she knows that Klark still has questions, and she knows that, as deeply as she wants to keep Klark to herself completely for the rest of the day, the Heda of the Skaikru has other responsibilities to attend to. Leksa knows that she, also, has other responsibilities she must attend to.

Klark hums in disappointment above her, the vibrations in her chest sinking comfortingly into Leksa’s, but slides partway off and eases her fingers out. Leksa shudders when Klark lifts herself on her shoulders and sucks each finger into her mouth, eyes closed to fully appreciate the flavor that saturates them.

“I’ve always loved the way you taste,” Klark rumbles quietly, drawing a small, shy smile along the corners of Leksa’s lips that grow when Klark bends to kiss them. Leksa can taste herself on Klark’s tongue as it slides inside her mouth, and arousal slices through her belly again hot and urgent. When their kiss breaks, Klark presses their foreheads together, and Leksa can smell her scent mingling in Klark’s. Her heart leaps for joy.

“Mine,” she whispers again, and Klark grins indulgently into her mouth.

“Yes,” her alpha growls, “yours. Always.”

Klark’s arm rises from her hip to scrape up her side and hold her more firmly, and Leksa buries her face in the warmth of her alpha’s shoulder. Relief and joy and gratitude have filled her to the brim, and are spilling over in hot tears. She finally has her alpha, she finally has Klark. She is only sorry it took so long. She is sorry she was too much of a coward to try to reach Klark in the years since her death and rebirth. She is sorry that she has simply let things be the way they are, instead of fighting like the warrior she used to be for what she wants. But now something is sliding into place, something that was too heavy and too painful for her to lift and move. Something is beginning to click. It is as frightening as it is heartening, but Leksa cannot pin down just what it is, and chooses to let it be for now until she can.

Instead, she lies enveloped in Klark’s embrace for a few long moments, with Klark nosing gently into the bite on her shoulder and humming in an attempt to calm her tears. Leksa can feel Klark’s questions burning between them, and it’s not long before her alpha finally, grudgingly, gives voice to them.

“Why didn’t word reach me that you lived?” it is an awkward question, and Leksa can hear how Klark is trying to manipulate the words to communicate it. She tightens her arm around her alpha, and reluctantly tilts her head up to look Klark in the eye. The blue of her iris is intense, scorching, and Leksa has to close her eyes and turn her face into her alpha’s shoulder again to find some trace of comfort. She knows Klark is not accusing her of anything, but Leksa carries the guilt of their past six unnecessary years apart like a weight over her heart.

“There was no word to reach you,” Leksa answers after a moment, voice weak and trembling, because she would do anything to turn back time, to beg Indra to tell Klark that she lives and waits for her in Polis, “when the Commander Spirit left me, I was just a warrior, crippled in war and a burden to my clan until I found a way to contribute in a meaningful way.”

Klark makes an angry noise in response, but her arms tighten around Leksa, and her mouth breathes contrastingly gentle kisses into her hair. “Your clan sucks.”

Leksa can’t hold back the broken, breathy laugh that statement pulls from her chest. She knows that her people only did things in their own way, and that it’s not wrong, but she also cannot disagree with her alpha. She has already sacrificed so much for her people, and Leksa has been left wondering for many nights if her sacrifices truly have meant so little to them. “Yes,” she sighs into Klark’s shoulder, and hates how it sounds more like a whimper. Klark’s weight shifts over her, and Leksa panics for a moment to think Klark might be leaving, but Klark is only lifting herself enough to stare down at her, and to hold her chin steady in her hands to keep their gazes locked. Her alpha’s fingers graze across her jaw and tangle in her hair at the nape of her neck, holding Leksa’s head firmly in place and stroking soothing circles into the soft skin behind her ear.

“Come home with me.”

It is a request, hidden behind a command. Leksa swallows as she stares up at her alpha and loses herself in the fierce, summer blue of her mate’s – _almost_ mate’s – eyes.

“Please,” Klark’s voice catches, her jaw clenches, and Leksa aches to lean up and kiss the tension away, but Klark continues before she has the chance, “we need a blacksmith in Camp Jaha anyway, and I need you. I made a stupid mistake not mating you, I won’t make it again –,”

“Klark.”

“– I swear, Leksa, I won’t make it again. I’ll build a forge for you and you won’t get bored, you’ll have plenty to do, and I’d stay here with you if I could but I can’t –,”

“Klark.”

“– and I know you have to put your people first, but –,”

“KLARK!”

Klark’s mouth snaps shut and Leksa wants to laugh at her, for rambling, for doubting her answer, for the expression in her eyes that’s a strange mix of apprehension and hope, but laughing in the face of Klark’s insecurity would be mean. So she struggles to keep it contained in the amused smile stretched across her lips, leans up and kisses her alpha’s strong chin.

“ _You_ are my people, Klark,” she says softly, and reaches up to trace the line of Klark’s jaw with the backs of her fingers, “and my place is with you.” She feels Klark relax into her, feels the tension in Klark’s shoulders ease and her entire frame sag into her.

“Is that a yes?” She sounds so hopeful, Leksa can’t help but grin and chuckle.

“Yes, Klark,” she nuzzles Klark’s jaw, runs her fingers soothingly through warm golden hair, “I’m not quite as bull-headed as you,” Leksa continues wryly, schooling her expression while Klark snorts in amusement, “clearly I am the smarter half of this whole.”

Klark’s laughter starts in fits of giggles, but Leksa’s very serious expression escalates them quickly into barking guffaws of laughter. Eventually, even Leksa’s bland straight face cracks, because Klark is crying from laughing so hard, and her face is as red as a tomato and her whole body is shaking against Leksa’s with the force of her mirth and Leksa just finds Klark’s laughter _funny_ and so _adorable_.

Their laughter fades after a while, and Klark’s face slowly sinks into Leksa’s shoulder. They nuzzle into each other, giggling kisses into hair and skin and sighing softly as their bodies relax into each other. This is new, Leksa realizes slowly. In all the times she and Klark spent together during her heats, they never used to laugh like this. They never used to tease quite like this. Leksa trails her fingers along her alpha’s spine and smiles at the way Klark shivers into her touch then relaxes. A flood of thoughts and memories and feelings break through her, but she’s not ready to face them all yet, not ready to deal with them all at once.

Instead, she distracts herself.

“Ask your questions, Klark,” she says quietly, “while we still have time.”

Klark tenses in her arms slightly, and Leksa can feel that when she relaxes, it is slightly forced. She has something on her mind, and it must be something big, something that is bothering her a great deal. It makes Leksa nervous, but she finds herself slipping into an old mannerism she hasn’t used with Klark in many, many years, not since the fall of Mount Weather. When Klark pulls away slightly to lean on her side and look down at her, Leksa’s expression is patient and calm, but also impassive.

The corner of Klark’s mouth ticks up into a slight smile, and she traces her finger along the curve of Leksa’s cheek. Leksa aches to know what her alpha is thinking, but the stoicism in her features does not waver. She cannot decide if falling into this old habit feels good or not.

“You’re heat comes in winter?” Klark asks softly, uncertainly, and it is strange but she sounds incredibly vulnerable in this moment. Leksa fights the confused frown she can feel ticking between her eyebrows, because she knows this is not Klark’s question. She knows, because there is no reason for this question to make Klark feel vulnerable.

“What is your question, Klark?” Leksa repeats, and though her face remains impassive and Klark’s nervousness is making her anxious in return, she digs her fingers into the soft skin of Klark’s back in a gesture meant to reassure Klark that she is here and not going anywhere. Klark licks her lips, and Leksa resists the urge to lean up and kiss them. A soft, low growl breaks in Klark’s throat, and Leksa squares her jaw against her alpha, meets her stormy blue expression head on, and waits.

Eventually, Klark dips her head in defeat. “Your heats these past years… who satisfied them?”

The question is surprising. Not only because Leksa did not expect to hear it, but also because Klark sounds neither angry nor jealous. If anything, Klark sounds scared. She sounds hurt. She sounds insecure and vulnerable and entirely unlike the powerful, aggressive, dominant alpha she is. Leksa stills, feels Klark’s weight over her and the tension buzzing beneath her lover’s skin.

Klark is still not asking her question. Or at least, she is asking in a roundabout way, and Leksa realizes this slowly as she chews it over. Because, between the two of them, Klark was never the vulnerable one. She was never frightened or hurt or insecure the way she is now – at least, not in a romantic or sexual setting like this one. Klark was always the one in control, and historically, it has been Leksa that was vulnerable, afraid, hurting. The sudden role reversal is jarring and confusing, even uncomfortable, as Leksa finds that she is the one in control now, she is the one with the power to break Klark or to soothe her. Because Klark is not asking who satisfied her heats – she is asking if Leksa has found someone else to replace her.

A chill slithers under Leksa’s skin. It has been a long time since she relinquished the last of her control, of her power. It has been a long time since she died and became ‘just Leksa’, a long time since she woke up to find that some of her injuries had permanent affects. She’d welcomed the change then, because having power, having control, had brought her nothing but pain and sorrow. Being Heda had taken Kostia and Klark away from her, had forced her to grow up far too fast, to give up her childhood dreams, her childhood friends, her childhood family. Given the opportunity to slink away into the shadows, to be forgotten, to become no one, to feel nothing, Leksa had taken hold with both hands and not looked back.

Klark stiffens in Leksa’s arms, and Leksa forces herself to swallow her fear and unease. She is afraid of losing everything again. But this is not the same as being Heda, and the power Leksa holds in her hands right now can heal Klark just as well as it can break her.

So Leksa breathes. She noses into the bruised mark on her alpha’s shoulder and licks her lips. She’s nervous, anxious like her alpha. But Klark’s weight over her is courage, and Klark’s breath against her skin is strength. Klark is a will to be more, to want more, and Leksa thinks these may be the things she’s forgotten since she died. So she steels herself, embraces the trust her alpha is placing in her, and allows herself to feel the things she’s been refusing to feel for so long.

“You were not here, Klark,” she says carefully after much consideration, “do you understand?”

Klark nods after a moment, and the gesture pressed into Leksa’s shoulder feels somehow hesitant and timid. Leksa sighs, “You believed I was dead. I believed you did not care. My heats were not what you remember.” They were not quite what Leksa remembers either, from the years before she’d ever met Klark or the years after. Neither the quick, irritating, three or four days of heightened carnal aggression and erotic sensitivity, nor the long, intense week or longer of clawing need and desperate, heartbroken release. Instead, they were haunting and lonely. Her body remembered and ached for Klark’s touch, and mourned its absence.

“Sometimes, they passed quickly,” Leksa forces herself to continue, and adopts the same soothing stroke of her fingers over Klark’s spine that Klark often uses to calm her almost subconsciously, “other times, they did not.”

“And when they didn’t?” Klark’s voice sounds strained, like she is forcing the words through her mouth. Leksa nips gently at the mark her teeth had stained into Klark’s shoulder, and Klark surprises her again with a soft, needy whine.

“When they didn’t…” Leksa sighs, steels herself, and continues, “I had someone satisfy them.”

Klark tenses over her.

“You were not here, Klark,” Leksa reminds her again gently, but Klark’s tension is buzzing against her skin, painful and itchy, and it puts Leksa on an edge she’d forgotten how to feel. She feels the growl begin to grow in Klark’s chest before she hears it.

“I’m here now,” Klark lifts herself onto her elbows to snarl down at her, and something snaps in Leksa. Suddenly, she’s angry, she’s furious, because Klark is the one who left, Klark is the one who rejected her, and because Leksa has died and come back, lost her title, the use of her leg, lost everything for her. And Klark has no right to growl and snarl and posture the way she is doing.

“Yes.” It is an agreement, a confirmation, but it sounds like a challenge. There is a growl in Leksa’s voice, deep and angry, and satisfaction curls warm in Leksa’s chest to see the way Klark’s eyes grow wide in surprise and her jaw drops. “You are here,” the growl deepens, Leksa’s upper lip lifts into a snarl, “and you are _mine_.”

Leksa’s leg may be nearly crippled, but her back and shoulders and chest are strong. She lifts and flips them both on the bed, traps Klark beneath her, their legs tangled with the sheets and each other and the growl in her throat reverberating between their chests, wild and unbroken. Klark is staring up at her with warm summer eyes, and Leksa feels a rush of power, of strength, of dominance. And though their biology has not changed, Leksa is alpha, and Klark must bow to her will.

Klark licks her lips. A soft, low whine gathers in the hollow of Klark’s throat. And then Klark lifts her chin, turns her head, and bares her throat in complete submission.

Leksa’s growl deepens. Klark’s whine intensifies, turns shrill and brittle.

“Yours.”

Leksa’s bite following Klark’s submission is not gentle. But Klark’s arms wind around her, pull her in, pull her closer, and her fingers tangle deep into Leksa’s curls. Klark shudders into her, cranes her neck into Leksa’s teeth, allows the omega full access to her throat. “Yours,” Klark whimpers, and Leksa can feel the vibrations of her alpha’s vocal cords beneath her lips and tongue. She can feel the rapid rhythm of her alpha’s heart struggling wildly beneath the skin. Leksa intensifies the pressure, and the bruises this bite will leave may last weeks instead of days, but the harder she bites, the more Klark seems to relax beneath her, and the tension in Leksa’s own shoulders begins to slip away. “Yours,” Klark whispers one more time, and there is such complete surrender in Klark’s voice that Leksa finally releases Klark’s neck from between her teeth and laps soothingly at the fresh, angry red welts rising in their place.

Something is settling into place. Because Klark is strength, and courage, and will, and the fire that drove Leksa to keep going, just as Kostia was the fire that drove Leksa to keep going, just as her people were the fire that drove Leksa to keep going. Leksa knows she is strong, she knows she is resilient, she knows she is dominant. But in her exhaustion, in her pain, she’d forgotten. Now she remembers, with her alpha trapped under her, baring her throat to her, submitting to her. And it feels good.

  

* * *

 

“I’m sorry, Lexa.”

Clarke is near tears. Not because the bite on her neck hurts, though fierce pain radiates through her neck and shoulder, and not because Lexa’s sudden, unexpected aggression and dominance upset her. She clings to her omega, arches into the tongue lapping gently at the possessive marks bruised into her flesh and bites into her bottom lip hard to fight back the salt burning behind her eyes.

Lexa pauses briefly in her ministrations, and another whine bursts from Clarke’s throat, fresh with need. Soft lips replace the tongue, and though Lexa’s kiss is not apologetic, it’s tender.

“I know.” There is not even a trace of a growl left in Lexa’s voice. But Clarke thinks she still sounds stronger now, as unconcerned and matter-of-fact as she used to before, when she was still Heda. It’s comforting, like Lexa’s assertive claim over her was comforting.

Clarke ghosts her fingertips up and down Lexa’s spine and melts into the shiver Lexa’s whole body over hers gives in return. “If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger,” Clarke whispers, quoting a line from the only book she has never been able to truly finish, “You died, Lexa. For what I believed to be for good. I missed you.” Clarke shudders into her omega’s arms. That she missed Lexa is an understatement, but she knows Lexa understands, because Lexa has always understood better than anyone else ever has.

Lexa shifts over her, and Clarke draws in a deep, steadying breath as her omega props herself up on her elbows to look down at her. All morning, Clarke has been afraid of waking up to discover that this is all a dream. But her neck hurts where Lexa bit her, and Lexa’s weight over her is heavy and solid. Lexa’s warm breath on her skin and her smoky, earthy scent surrounding them is real, and Clarke feels stronger, taller, tougher… better. There is a light in Lexa’s eyes, and she traces lazy circles over Clarke’s chest with light fingers while she considers her words.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke reiterates, even though she knows she doesn’t have to. Lexa is long owed this apology, and from more people than just Clarke herself.

A hazy smile curls at the corner of Lexa’s lips. She dips her head to trace wandering kisses along Clarke’s jawline, and Clarke holds perfectly still for her, afraid that a single wrong move will tear her omega’s lips away.

Lexa’s mouth pauses over Clarke’s ear, and she feels her omega’s nose brush through the short baby hairs beside it.

“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

Lexa breathes it into Clarke’s ear, and Clarke is stunned, because her omega is quoting Brontë right back at her, and because what are the chances that of the billions of books that did not survive the bombs and the tragedy of earth a hundred years ago, it is this one that has survived on earth and in space for them to read and apply to their own lives?

Clarke expels the breath she didn’t know she was holding and nuzzles into her omega’s throat, scattering butterfly kisses across her jaw and the nape of her neck and smiling so wide she thinks her face might split in half.

Though Clarke knows she is missed elsewhere by her people, and knows she will be late for her meeting later that day with the Heda, she does not want to leave her omega’s side. Lexa pushes her briefly to do what she must, but gives in quickly, because it has been six years, and because, to Clarke’s eternal delight, she’s finally taking what she wants. Clarke is grateful that what Lexa wants is her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. Some of you had me nervous to check my comments all weekend!
> 
> Thank you for all the lovely, supportive comments I've been receiving (I feed on them)! Thank you for the truly constructive criticisms. And most of all this week, thank you to my beta, Flynn, for being willing to hash out every thought with me, but also for not letting me second guess myself.
> 
> I think we have about 2 chapters left before your well-deserved epilogue. We had one, but I've drawn out a few scenes here and there and it got longer.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey ya'll! Sorry this is coming up a few hours later than usual. It's been a very busy past few days - so unfortunately, not only is this chapter a little late, but Flynn has not had a chance to beta it for you all. =(  
> So this chapter is unbeta-ed. All errors are mine. 
> 
> Two chapters remain - the final 10th chapter being the promised fluffy epilogue. I hope you've enjoyed the journey! I'll announce more info about the next Clexa Omegaverse story I'm currently planning and outlining within the next couple of chapters.

Clarke discovers when she finally brings herself to leave Lexa’s room that it is Ollon alone who prevented complete chaos at the Sky People’s district. While Clarke and Lexa shut themselves away for hours in her room, Ollon took it upon himself to find Bellamy and calm the irate alpha’s nerves. So when Clarke arrives back in her own room in the district alone, she is surprised and a little disturbed to find Bellamy in a chair by the door waiting for her.

She is more surprised when he stands and wraps his arms around her stiff frame and hugs her. She is floored when, as he leans back, she sees a genuinely hopeful smile lighting his face. The last time they spoke of Lexa nearly six years ago, Bellamy was still wary, still angry, still resentful of the old Commander and what she’d done. But Bellamy appears to have changed his mind since then, as he asks Clarke question after question about her omega: is she well? How did she find her? Will they mate, and will Lexa return with them to Camp Jaha? How did she survive and what has she been doing for all these years?

The only time Bellamy’s expression darkens is when he asks why Lexa did not reveal to Clarke five years ago that she still lived. The only time Bellamy seems angry is when Clarke explains. But his anger dissipates quickly, and Clarke knows it is only on her behalf, as a friend who has watched her fade away slowly in her grief. He is willing to forget the past, willing to look past Lexa’s betrayal now. Like Clarke, he has not forgiven her, but like Clarke, he finds it hardly matters. Time has worn his anger away, and Bellamy is more interested in being happy for Clarke than he is in nursing old wounds. And their alliance with the grounders is now so iron-clad, he no longer fears a new betrayal the way he used to.

Aside from the short time she allows Bellamy to interrogate her, Clarke is focused. She bathes and gets dressed, then barrels through the rest of her day assisting in the set-up for the Harvest Festival, meeting with the leaders of other clans and with Mona to discuss business arrangements and exchange relevant news. She returns to Ollon’s forge to find Lexa braced on a stool and covered in sweat-slicked soot, exhausted, but more comfortable with her work than Clarke has ever seen her. Ollon works alongside her in silence, and though his nostrils flare as Clarke’s alpha scent reaches him, he does not otherwise react to her presence.

For the full week of Clarke’s stay in Polis, she spends her nights in Lexa’s room. And though Lexa joins her in the evenings when the Harvest Festival begins in full swing, Clarke is selfish with their time together, skipping out on meetings early and joining the rest of her people in the mornings late, because she is not ready to share Lexa yet and because being apart from her during the day is too unpleasant. It’s not until they are ready to leave Polis to go home that Clarke finally brings Lexa back to the Sky People’s district with her, bags packed and ready for the journey.

 

* * *

 

Lexa tenses as the gates of Camp Jaha crawl into view. Clarke can feel her entire body lock up against her own, and knows she’s nervous about her reception among the Sky People. Clarke can’t blame her, because Lexa’s betrayal nearly a decade ago is not one easily forgotten, and not one forgiven. But she shuffles the reins around on her lap so she can hold them with one hand and slips her other into her omega’s lap, trying to radiate comfort through her palm.

Lexa tilts her head minutely, and from the corner of her eye, Clarke can see the small, tense smile curling on the corner of Lexa’s lip. Lexa relaxes beside her, but only a little.

They arrive to little fanfare, though the guards posted at the gate stare at Lexa and stare at the massive cart she and Clarke are driving. Their expressions are confused and concerned, but they remain silent and tightlipped. They recognize Lexa, but they also see Clarke’s hand resting on Lexa’s thigh, and the matching bruises staining their necks. Besides, the cargo they carry is of far more interest to them.

Clarke does not tense until she has stopped the cart and shouted orders to have everything unloaded and brought to the empty plot cleared away specifically for its purpose. By then, Kane and Abby have come out to greet them, and it is Abby that has both her and Lexa nervous. For a few moments, Clarke ignores her mother, and focuses entirely on making sure the anvil and other goods bought and bartered for in Polis are put away quickly and safely. Lexa disembarks before her, shoulders tight and body stiff with nerves, and Clarke clambers after.

When Abby approaches them, her expression is tight. Her lips are drawn in a thin white line and her dark eyes burn. But she says nothing, only holds her hands behind her back and waits for Clarke’s attention.

“Mom,” Clarke sighs, but she’s not sure what else to say to relieve the tension running between her and Lexa. Lexa stands stiff-backed beside her, and Abby stares between her and Clarke.

“Clarke,” Abby responds curtly, then “Lexa.”

That Lexa is alive is no longer a surprise to Abby. Clarke knows that Bellamy radioed her the same day he caught Lexa’s scent in Clarke’s and discovered that the ex-Heda still lives. She also knows that Abby was aware that Lexa would be returning with them. Abby’s behavior is not due to shock, it’s the last of the resentment and anger she harbored and never resolved.

Clarke takes a step back. She watches between Abby and Lexa, and as much as she wants to interfere, as much as she wants to growl at her mother until she steps down, she knows it’s not her place. This is between Abby and Lexa, and Lexa is more than capable of standing her own ground. So Clarke watches as Abby’s full attention shifts to Lexa. She sees the aggressive hunch of her mother’s shoulders, the snarl curling her mother’s lip, the stiffening of her limbs and the clench of her hands.

Lexa, for her part, only stands straight. One hand is held behind her, while the other rests comfortably, casually, on the handle of her cane. As Abby’s expression shifts from tense to angry, Lexa lifts her chin, narrows her eyes challengingly at Abby, and does nothing else.

The tension between them is palpable. Clarke can feel it strung between them, vibrating and brittle. A low, deep growl rolls from Abby’s chest, but Lexa hardly bats an eye. Clarke knows the sharp glint in Lexa’s mossy green eyes, remembers it with a pang of painful nostalgia as an expression Lexa often wore as Heda. It’s a hard look, and it means business.

Abby’s growl fades, but Clarke can see the play of muscle jumping in her mother’s jaw.

“Betray my daughter again, and I will end you.” Abby’s voice is low, dangerous. Her dark eyes are hard and bore directly into Lexa’s. Lexa does not flinch, does not waver. Clarke watches with pride while her omega tilts her head slightly and stares back with equal intensity. The expression in Lexa’s eyes is not cold, but it is steely and determined.

Lexa allows the half-threat to linger in the air between them, before a tiny, humorless smile curls at the corner of her lip. “I would expect nothing less,” she replies, voice soft and low, but unwavering. She does not submit to Abby, but she does not challenge her either. She won’t, Clarke knows, unless Abby challenges her first.

People are watching nervously on the sidelines. Clarke takes a small, casual step closer to her omega and slips her hand in Lexa’s. The tension is swiftly growing uncomfortable for Clarke, and though she knows Lexa does not want her to interfere, she’s beginning to feel the need to anyway. Her mother’s expression has not softened, the tension in Abby’s shoulders has not eased, and Lexa is capable of holding her own but Clarke is growing agitated by her mother’s behavior.

Then Abby blinks. Her back straightens, and though she doesn’t relax, her posture is no longer threatening or aggressive. She nods once, sharply, then turns and walks away, and Clarke expels a long, slow breath in relief. Beside her, Lexa relaxes visibly.

“Just give her some time,” Kane’s voice startles Clarke out of her thoughts. The older man is smiling faintly, and gives a helpless shrug when he sees that both Clarke and Lexa are listening. “She’s just worried.”

“She doesn’t have to worry,” Clarke retorts, a little annoyed with her mother, but a little appeased by the slight, gentle squeeze of Lexa’s hand in hers. The gesture is enough to tell Clarke that Lexa doesn’t mind, isn’t bothered by it, perhaps even approves of it. Kane smiles a little indulgently at her.

“Perhaps not. But she’s your mother. She worries anyway.”

After that, there is little resistance or outcry to Lexa’s presence and new residence in Camp Jaha. Most reactions are like Bellamy’s – initial suspicion and wary acceptance that quickly develops into curious respect and tentative interest. It is clear how Clarke and Lexa feel about each other, and it is clear that their commitment to each other will not affect them negatively. And as the day progresses, it is clear to Clarke that Raven will need more time to process and accept Lexa’s presence, Octavia is wary but over the past, Bellamy is just happy to see Clarke happy, and Monty is the most unlikely first real friend Lexa will make.

 

* * *

 

When Leksa first wakes, she is alone. Klark’s scent is still rich in the sheets, she has not been gone long enough for it to fade, but the bed beside her where Klark usually sleeps is cold. Leksa shivers under the covers, pulls them tighter around her and stares out the shuttered window, trying to determine by the slant of moonlight pouring silver and ethereal through the slats what time of night it is. Not that it matters, Klark is late coming home either way. She should have been home at sundown. TonDC is only the better part of a day’s journey away, and Leksa knows Klark left at dawn that morning.

But there is snow lying in a thick blanket across the ground, and even with the new streets cobbled between Camp Jaha and TonDC, the way is treacherous and slow. Despite expecting Klark to be late coming home, though, Leksa is nervous, anxious for her alpha. Even after months together, Klark’s monthly trips to TonDC make Leksa impatient for Klark’s return.

She heaves a heavy sigh and pulls herself up, gathering the heavy blankets and furs around her shoulders for added warmth. The fire in the hearth has long smoldered to ash and it is uncomfortably cold, even in heavy flannel sleepwear. The steel of Leksa’s brace burns frozen against her skin as she struggles to pull it on.

It is incredible the way the Sky People have welcomed her into their lives. The first week of initial wary acceptance yielded smoothly to curious intrigue, and slowly, Clarke’s friends, Clarke’s family, Clarke’s people, began to carve out a place in their lives and hearts for her, despite her history and regardless of her disability. Even Reiven and Abi have slowly learned to accept, even enjoy, Leksa’s company. In point of fact, the brace that Leksa is strapping on to her leg now was built for her by Reiven, and Abi visits her twice weekly to offer physical therapy to diminish the pain Leksa feels in it as much as possible.

It works mostly, but the colder the weather gets, the more Leksa’s knee pains her. She flinches against the sharp stab that races through her leg as she stretches it, but rises with little difficulty to rekindle the fire. The muffled clop of hooves in thick snow outside have picked up Leksa’s heart, and she thinks the thin, shrill whine of the village’s gate creaking open and closed may be what woke her.

By the time the front door eases open, Leksa has built the fire back to roaring, and sits in front of it with both hands stretched out and her furs piled around her shoulders. She hears the hesitant stomp of boots at the door and sighs gratefully.

“Lexa?” Klark’s voice coming from the door is soft and a little rough with exhaustion. She sounds like she is afraid of waking Leksa, though she does not appear surprised when she pokes her head through the bedroom door to find Leksa awake. “Hey,” Klark’s smile is a breath of fresh air, and snowflakes glitter in her golden hair. Leksa can’t stop the answering smile curling at the corners of her mouth as she turns to see her alpha and sucks in a breath to catch her scent, fresh and cold and wet.

“Klark,” Leksa responds softly. Klark disappears again, and Leksa can hear her grunt as she struggles with her boots and over-clothes. “You’re late.”

There is silence for a few minutes, and then Klark pads into their bedroom still carding her fingers through her hair in a futile attempt to get the moisture out. “Sorry babe, the snow-drifts along the road slowed us down,” Klark explains. She drops to the floor beside Leksa and tugs at the furs until Leksa reluctantly holds them out for Klark to cuddle under. Leksa shivers because her alpha’s clothes and skin are freezing against her own. Despite the discomfort, she folds Klark into her arms and pulls Klark’s legs over her lap to keep her close and help her get warm. Klark grins, drives her nose into the warm space between Leksa’s neck and shoulder, and laughs at the way Leksa squeals in surprise and squirms to get away.

“Hi,” Klark’s grin is infectious. Leksa rolls her eyes, rubs at her neck to warm the spot Klark’s nose has chilled, and can’t fight the stupid grin breaking across her own lips. She has just enough time to murmur “hi,” quietly back before Klark’s cold mouth whispers against her own, and Klark’s cold arms are snaking around her back and shoulders, and Klark’s cold hair is slipping into the cracks between them and the furs. But Leksa isn’t cold anymore. She warms from her belly out, because Klark is home and kissing her, and Leksa has missed her more than she’s willing to admit.

Klark hums happily into her mouth, and Leksa pulls her just a little closer. No matter how comfortable Clarke’s friends and family try to make her, home is always most comfortable when Klark is there with her. Leksa feels herself relax completely and her previous sleepiness steal over her again. She doesn’t even want to get up now, the furs are growing warm under and around them and she’s comfortable with her alpha cuddled up beside her.

“Can’t be much longer now, can it?” Klark’s whisper in the orange glow of their fire is soft, and she sounds almost like she’s holding her breath. Leksa feels Klark’s teeth nipping at the layers of bruises on her neck, her eyes droop sleepily but she feels a thrill of excitement and desire run through her whole body at the gesture. Klark does not need to specify what she’s talking about for Leksa to understand. The irony isn’t lost on Leksa that, now that she’s looking and waiting for it, her heat is on time, rather than early.

She finds Klark’s cold hands over her shoulder and tangles their fingers together, holding Klark’s arms around her tightly. “Not much longer, niron. A week or two, at the outside.” Leksa allows her head to tumble to Klark’s shoulder, and the weight of Klark’s settling over it is immensely soothing. Her eyes droop shut and Klark’s warm, sunny scent envelops her like a favorite blanket.

Klark snorts into Leksa’s hair, and her warm breath breaking over the back of Leksa’s neck sends a shiver running down Leksa’s spine. “Bet I can start it a little earlier than that, at least.” Klark is both teasing and serious. Leksa can hear the exhaustion in her alpha’s voice, and knows how long and difficult her trip home has been. But she also knows how anxious Klark is for Leksa’s heat. She knows, because Leksa is impatient for it too. She aches for Klark’s teeth, aches for her cock and knot, aches to be bound completely and irrevocably to the woman she loves. Leksa’s fingers slide from Klark’s, and she winds her arms around her alpha’s legs to hug them close to her chest.

“I bet you could,” Leksa’s mumbled reply is sleepy and muffled, and she fits in a massive, jaw-cracking yawn before her next slurred sentence, “but let’s try in the morning.”

Warm kisses are pressed into her throat. Klark shifts against her and Leksa laughs at the tired groan that escapes Klark’s chest. As much as Leksa would love to just sleep here, on the floor in front of the fire, neither she nor Klark are very young anymore, and both of them would wake with cricks in their backs and necks in the morning. Still, managing her own forge, training young Sky Children how to smith, and crafting the vast majority of Camp Jaha’s necessary tools and supplies have kept Leksa strong. She slides her arms under Klark’s knees and around her shoulders and ignores her lover’s sleepy scolding when she lifts her.

“Hypocrite,” Leksa chuckles, and limps only a little on her way to the bed before tossing Klark haphazardly across it. Klark’s surprised and annoyed yelp is infinitely worth the trouble, and while Klark tugs what’s left of her clothes off, Leksa removes the brace from her knee.

With Klark’s arms wrapped tight around her, the furs heavy over them both, and Leksa’s nose buried in the sweet hollow of her alpha’s throat, it is so easy and so natural for Leksa to simply drop off into sleep that she doesn’t even remember doing it.

 

* * *

 

Despite Clarke’s best efforts, it is nearly a full week before Lexa’s heat arrives.

Clarke wakes that morning to her lover’s warm breath skating across her throat and her low, excited voice telling her softly that her heat is coming sometime in the next day, maybe two. At first, Clarke hardly reacts to it, she’s still half-asleep and thinks she may be dreaming. Lexa is warm trapped beneath the arm and leg she’s thrown haphazardly across her and Lexa’s heat is something Clarke has been dreaming about excitedly for months.

“Klark,” Lexa’s voice, rough with sleep, prods her a little more into wakefulness. Clarke groans, tugs her omega closer and tries to cover her mouth with a hand to get her to quiet down so she can sleep a little longer. It’s not even dawn yet, and the air just outside their shared furs is bitterly cold. “Klark, did you hear me?”

Clarke cracks an eye open to glare at Lexa, and finds that Lexa is glowing a little more than usual. There is a goofy smile stretched across her lips, a rare sight, so she opens both eyes to take it in for as long as it’s there. Warm hands creep under Clarke’s shirt and skim over the curve of a breast, and finally, Clarke realizes fully what her omega has just told her.

“Wait, really?” Clarke is completely awake now. She bolts upright much to Lexa’s amusement and grins as she straddles her omega. “About damn time!” Lexa does not stop laughing while Clarke leans down to pepper the long, delicious column of her neck in kisses, but gently pushes her off.

“Not yet, niron. Tomorrow, maybe. Get off, you’re smothering me!”

Clarke does not get off. She’s too excited, too anxious, too damn horny to comply right away, and she knows Lexa feels just the same. They wrestle in bed instead, and Clarke takes advantage of her years-old discovery that Lexa is ticklish around the ribs to torture her until Lexa can’t breathe, until she’s red in the face and tears are streaming down her cheeks with laughter.

As much as Clarke wants to fuck Lexa into her heat right away, she knows preparations must be made beforehand, especially considering the brutal winter raging around them. She spends the day gathering everything they will need to barricade themselves at home for the next week – food, water, plenty of firewood – and cancels all her meetings and the few first aid classes she teaches. She bothers Lexa every opportunity she gets, dropping by her omega’s forge every few hours to check if Lexa’s heat has started at all early, to smother her neck and cheeks and mouth with kisses, just to breathe her mate’s thickening scent in and hear her voice and see the brightening glow of heat in her skin. Lexa calls her ‘heatbrain’ all day instead of niron, and Clarke laughs every time.

She meets with her mother to collect the tea Lexa will need to prevent pregnancy, though she wishes she could ‘accidentally forget’, and endures endless teasing from Abby as well.

“Have you talked to her about it yet?” Her mother’s questions about Clarke’s desire to sire a child of her own is not a surprise, even if it’s a little unwelcome. Clarke shifts on her feet awkwardly, tucks the small bag of crushed leaves into her pocket, and shrugs. Abby raises an eyebrow at her and clucks, but does not push any harder.

Clarke checks and double checks and triple checks that they have everything they need while she waits for Lexa to come home, and is practically jumping at the door when she hears her omega’s feet stamp and scrape just outside.

When she comes in, she is dressed only in a thin shirt and pants, and has her heavy layers draped uselessly over her arm. She smells of black smoke and molten steel and _heat_ , and Clarke licks her lips as she jumps to greet her omega at the door. Arousal pools heavy in her gut, because despite the thin, paltry layers Lexa is wearing, her skin is warm to the touch, her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are bright with excitement.

“Klark – stop!” Lexa laughs while she shoves Clarke’s pawing hands away, but Clarke only grins and tugs Lexa closer by her hips to plant a heavy kiss quite firmly on her omega’s mouth. Their kiss is broken by another laugh from Lexa, who gently disengages herself from Clarke long enough to rid herself of the extra clothes in her arms and escape into their bedroom. “You’re crowding me,” she explains, voice gentle and a small smile curled at the corners of her mouth to soften the rejection, “and I smell of smoke.”

“I know,” Clarke grins and follows her, but doesn’t reach for Lexa no matter how much her hands itch for her lover’s skin, “hot steel, black smoke and heat. It’s sexy.”

Clarke has to force herself to remember to breathe then, because the way Lexa turns to look at her makes her knees weak and arousal slice sharp and hot through her abdomen. Lexa’s eyes are dark with desire, and Clarke thinks she must be very, very close to starting her heat because the scent that sweeps through the room is thick and strong and makes her belly clench with need. Whatever Lexa was planning to do before, she seems to have forgotten, and Clarke collapses backward onto the bed as her omega advances slowly on her. The expression in Lexa’s eyes is predatory and Clarke thinks she’s picking up the sweet, smoky notes of Lexa’s arousal pooling between her legs. Lexa hums, and Clarke thinks she can hear the slight roll of a growl in her omega’s voice.

“Just make sure the anvil’s not hot when you decide to bend me over it and take me.”

The very image of Lexa, bare and bowed over the anvil in her forge while Clarke fucks into her from behind is enough to make Clarke’s blood run hot in her veins and her heart gallop in her chest. She sucks in a sharp breath, Lexa bears down over her, and Clarke can’t stop the sudden jerk of her hips as Lexa straddles her lap and settles clumsily and unevenly into her. Lexa’s mouth as it sweeps kisses across the expanse of her neck is hot, pressure throbs into life between her legs, and Clarke can’t stop the deep, guttural growl that bursts from her chest.

“Clothes,” she rumbles, voice low and gruff, “off.”

She thinks she hears a stammered ‘fuck’ break from Lexa’s lips, and the heat in her omega’s skin doubles as she clambers up to tear at her own clothes. Clarke helps her eagerly, yanking to get both their pants off at once while Lexa focuses first on her own shirt, then on Clarke’s. They are both bare and naked in record time, neither of them fully aware of the rips they’ve torn in their clothes in their eagerness, and Clarke tosses Lexa onto the bed before creeping on after her. She opens Lexa’s legs at the knees, fingers skating over the straps of Lexa’s brace as she eases between, and swallows hard at the wet gleam already gathering along the flushing lips of her omega’s cunt.

Need settles low in Clarke’s belly. While Lexa struggles with her brace, Clarke slides two fingers along the slick heat dripping between Lexa’s legs. Her breath hitches with Lexa’s, she traps her omega’s jerking hips with one hand and straddles Lexa’s thigh. She is wet with anticipation, desperate for friction already and aching for her cock to grow.

But there is something else Clarke wants while she waits for Lexa’s heat to start.

“Touch yourself,” she rasps, unable to tear her eyes from her omega’s slick cunt, “I want to watch you come on your own fingers.” A sharp whine explodes from Lexa’s throat, and though Clarke slouches for a better view, she glances up to meet her omega’s eyes. They are blown deliciously black with lust, and only a sliver of ochre-speckled green is visible around the edges. Her cheeks are flushed down to her chest and Clarke is finding it difficult to breathe because her omega is so fucking beautiful.

Lexa’s calloused fingers creep across her belly. Clarke knows she’s reluctant to masturbate like this in front of her, and she usually does not ask regardless of how much she loves to watch Lexa pleasure herself. But it has been a long time, she can see how desperate Lexa is for release, and she thinks Lexa is more willing than usual this time, with Clarke’s own wetness gliding across Lexa’s thigh with every slow, arrhythmic thrust of Clarke’s hips. Clarke stares at her, challenging her without words, until Lexa tilts her chin up to expose her throat in submission and her dark fingers dip to the sweet-smelling heat around her cunt.

Fuck, it’s a beautiful sight. Clarke’s clit throbs to see the way Lexa touches herself, her throat is dry and it is a struggle to pull air into her starved lungs. “Tease yourself first,” Clarke growls, and the sudden hitch in Lexa’s breathing is another delicious indication of how close Lexa is to her heat. Clarke’s dominance is arousing to her omega, wet heat spills between Lexa’s fingers as they glide through her folds and circle the stiffening clit at the top. Clarke aches to touch with her, to tease with her, to suck Lexa’s arousal into her mouth and make her omega whimper with ecstasy. But watching Lexa fuck herself is a rare pleasure, and Clarke brushes her fingers over her own clit and swallows a moan at the way it throbs under her touch.

Arousal coils thick and heavy in Clarke’s abdomen as Lexa’s hips begin to jerk against her own fingers. A low whine swells in Lexa’s chest, and the way Lexa’s outer lips petal out and flush tell her just how desperately Lexa needs to be filled with something, anything. Clarke pinches her clit between her fingers, sweeps her own slippery heat around it in slow circles and bucks her hips against the thigh pressed between her own. “Fuck yourself,” Clarke chokes out, “two fingers.”

Lexa’s entrance pulses, fresh heat swells from her cunt and Clarke could come to the very scent, rich and musky, that swells with it. Lexa slides her fingers in past the tight ring of muscle in her entrance and watching her omega begin to fuck herself nearly has Clarke coming all on its own. She thinks Lexa might be close to orgasm too, from the way she is whimpering and moaning and arching her hips. “Harder,” Clarke grunts while she circles her own clit faster and bucks again against Lexa’s thigh, “faster!”

Desperate need and sharp, slicing desire break through Clarke’s core as Lexa buries her fingers knuckle deep into her cunt and thrusts hard and fast. Two fingers aren’t enough, Clarke realizes, Lexa needs three to come, and Clarke needs three to see the way the tight ring of muscle in her omega’s entrance stretches under the pressure. Slick spills between Lexa’s fingers and between Clarke’s thighs, and their hips are both bucking desperately for more friction. “Three fingers,” Clarke grunts, and feels a heavy swell and twitch in her clit against the pads of her fingers. Lexa’s heat surges with the glistening juices that spill past Lexa’s fingers as she plunges a third in.

“Klark!”

Her strangled name on Lexa’s tongue has orgasm ripping through Clarke. She gyrates her hips wildly over her omega’s thigh and moans when Lexa follows her visibly over the edge. Her omega’s hips surge, her fingers slam hard into herself and she releases in a heavy wave. The heavy, rich scent of Lexa’s heat floods her senses with it, and Clarke’s clit stiffens and swells at the sound of Lexa’s low, growling moan.

“Oh, fuck,” Clarke’s eyes have not left Lexa’s cunt. She feels her cock begin to grow against the palm of her hand and her orgasm breaks into fresh, urgent need all over again. “You’re in heat.”

The “yes” Lexa gasps out has Clarke shuddering with want. Lexa is still fucking herself violently on her fingers, clenching and throbbing deliciously around the glistening digits and Clarke is mesmerized while her cock swells and stiffens in her hand. She strokes herself while she watches, fullness pounds along the growing length, wetness beads along the slit at the head and Clarke is impatient to bury every inch of her throbbing shaft in the tight, wet heat of Lexa’s slick cunt.

Instead, Clarke resettles herself between Lexa’s legs and crouches to breathe in the intoxicating scent of her omega’s heat. She’s missed it, desperately, in the past six years, and as the rich woodsy smell wraps around her, Clarke leans in to lick the slick from Lexa’s knuckles.

“Stay in,” she growls against Lexa’s hand when her omega moves to slide it out of the way. Lexa pauses, then grinds her palm against her clit and continues to thrust her fingers in and out while Clarke licks around them, sucks the juices from between them, and eases them out one by one to clean them with her mouth until Lexa’s cunt is empty and Lexa is whining to be filled again. She spends a few minutes longer gliding her tongue through her omega’s folds and sucking down every drop of Lexa’s last orgasm with Lexa’s fingers tangled in her hair and tugging gently. Only when she’s had her fill does Clarke rise on one hand and look at Lexa.

Lexa stares back at her, eyes hazy and black with arousal. Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth and the strong muscles along her chest and shoulders and stomach flex as she writhes and arches against the bed. Fullness pounds heavy and aching along every inch of Clarke’s cock, and she gives it a firm tug to ease it. Wetness beads at its tip, and Clarke sucks in a deep breath at the way Lexa’s gaze flickers to it and the low, throaty moan that cracks in her throat.

“Fuck me, Klark,” Lexa’s voice is sultry, and at least an octave lower than usual. Her hips struggle to rise against the bed, and Clarke strokes her full length again because watching Lexa watching her is so incredibly arousing. She brushes kisses into her omega’s skin in a seductive trail from her hip to her throat and cradles herself in Lexa’s hips. The swollen head of her cock settles against the slick entrance of her omega’s cunt just as Lexa’s good leg winds around her hips with her calf settled across her backside. Lexa’s hands scrape up her back, Lexa’s hot mouth hovers over her throat, and it’s all Clarke can do not to bury her whole cock from base to tip completely inside Lexa with a single thrust. Lexa’s entrance is already incredibly tight over the head, and Clarke knows she’ll need to work it in slowly to keep this experience pleasurable instead of painful for her omega.

The calf pressed over her ass urges her in, Lexa’s blunt nails scrape across her shoulders, and Clarke holds her breath in anticipation as she slowly starts to push.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are all so fantastic. Thank you all so much for joining me on this wild ride, thank you for your support, your kudos, your comments (and your pain, Flynn especially enjoyed that too!) 
> 
> This chapter is extremely NSFW. Or anywhere else you happen to be, really, unless it's alone (or with a partner, if that's how you swing ;D), in your room, with the door locked. Enjoy, my loves!
> 
> Look for your thank-you-fluffy-Clexa-baby chapter on Thursday!!!

“Fuck me, Klark, please,” Leksa is whimpering, her whole body aching for the cock she can feel resting against her folds. She arches into the heavy weight draped over her, presses the heel of her foot into the back of Klark’s thigh and growls to feel an intensifying pressure against her entrance. Klark’s cock is bigger than she remembers, thicker, and a little intimidating. But she wants it – all of it – inside her.

It has been a long time since she’s been fucked. Her past three heats have been mild, and she knows she’s tighter than she’s been in a very long time. She knows penetration will hurt, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t just want Klark, she needs her.

Klark breathes soothing kisses along the column of her neck, her chest vibrates into Leksa’s with a low, soft, cautionary growl. “Patience, babe. I don’t want to hurt you.”

But Klark’s rich voice, deeper than usual, only spurs Leksa on. She grunts as she forces her hips up, ignores the dull throb in her knee for this kind of movement, and urges Klark on with the leg she has wrapped around her alpha’s hips. The head of Klark’s cock slips past her folds and presses into the tight ring of muscle in her entrance. A wave of needy desire breaks past and washes them both in Leksa’s scent and slick. Klark is shaking over her in her attempt to maintain control.

“Klark,” her voice cracks despite her best efforts, but it does the trick. The engorged head of her alpha’s cock pushes into her hard, and though Leksa’s walls are still quivering with need, the pressure in her entrance is incredible. Klark tilts her hips, changes the angle, and the swollen head jogs in. Leksa sucks in a sharp breath, arousal thrums in her belly. She needs more.

“Fuck,” Klark’s voice breaks in her ear, heavy and strained with want. “More,” Leksa growls, arches and gasps in satisfaction as another inch of Klark’s pounding length slides in a little deeper. Need clenches in her belly, and another wave of slick want pulses through her. Klark is whimpering over her, hips jerking slightly in a desperate attempt not to force herself all the way in and hurt Leksa. “More!” she needs more! Klark’s cock is pounding within her, she can feel every throb of fullness as it races along the length, can feel the pulsing muscle part her walls and split her open. Leksa is struggling to breathe, arching and writhing beneath her alpha’s heavy weight to invite it all in, to pull more of her alpha’s cock inside.

But Klark is too careful with her. And Leksa is growing too impatient.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Klark whimpers into her ear, and blazes a trail of kisses along Leksa’s throat that only serves to ignite a deeper passion and more urgent need in every burning inch of Leksa’s skin. She growls, low and deep, slips her hands under Klark’s shoulders and shoves - the slip and slide of Klark’s cock in her cunt steals her breath away – and then Leksa is on top, panting heavily and gyrating her hips over Klark’s while Klark stares up at her, hazy-eyed with arousal and her mouth parted in shock.

“You were going too slow,” Leksa growls in explanation as she rises over her alpha’s chest. Klark’s hands settle at her hips – Leksa loves the pressure in her alpha’s fingertips – and Leksa pushes down gently. The slide of Klark’s cock as it slowly splits her open sends a violent shudder of need running down Leksa’s spine. She moans, Klark’s fingers over her hips press harder, the length buried nearly halfway in her cunt throbs and twitches, and Leksa revels in the feeling of being split apart like this. She gyrates once, drops over Klark’s chest, and nips into a delicious, pert nipple.

“Fuck,” Klark curses again. Between the rasp of her alpha’s voice and the massive cock moving inside her and the salt Leksa can taste on her tongue from her alpha’s breast, she’s on the edge again already. Leksa swirls her tongue around the silky skin surrounding the nipple, pushes a little deeper in and moans. Her walls flutter and pull needily around the throbbing muscle buried halfway inside. She thinks she can hold back her orgasm long enough to pull it all the way in, but then a heavy pulse runs along the length just as she tilts her hips and just the right amount of pressure snaps against her front wall –

Orgasm explodes low in her belly. Klark’s low, deep growl breaks into a shout, and Leksa releases the nipple in her mouth to whimper in pleasure against her alpha’s chest. “Fuck!” Klark’s hips jump into hers, and with a single deep thrust, Klark is buried to the hilt in her cunt. Fullness pounds through her, Leksa can’t breathe for the way she is split so wide open. She convulses over Klark, arches into the arms wrapping firmly, solidly around her, and pumps her hips wildly into Klark as heavy contractions ripple through her.

“Fuck, Lexa, not yet, not yet…” Klark’s hot breath puffs against the back of her neck, sending a thrill of delight racing along Lexa’s spine to pound in her clit. Klark’s cock inside her is throbbing, Leksa can feel the head beat into her back wall and it starts another violent round of contractions and another hot wave of heat rushing through her to bathe their interlocked hips with her release. Klark whimpers beneath her, whole body tense, and as Leksa rises with a growl, pressure explodes from the tip of Klark’s cock to break against her back wall. Klark strains into her, but the short, staccato burst of come from her alpha’s cock is enough to make Leksa crazy.

She straddles Klark’s hips, the pain in her knee completely forgotten, and grinds down. There is no knot yet, but she can feel it begin to swell at the base of her alpha’s cock. Klark’s face is flushed, her bottom lip clenched between her teeth, eyes black with need and her hands hard over Leksa’s waist. She moves her hips, and with every circle she makes she can feel every delicious, throbbing inch of her alpha’s cock move inside her. She clenches down, another short burst of come explodes into her, orgasm rolls through her again, “Klark -,” it’s barely a breath, all the air in Leksa’s lungs is gone. The knot swelling against her hardens, expands, she wants it inside, desperately.

“Ride me,” Klark growls, and the violent aftershocks her quick orgasm had begun to fade into flare into renewed need. She has already orgasmed twice, but she needs release again, and Leksa throws back her head, closes her eyes and fucks herself on Klark’s cock.

  

* * *

 

Clarke is barely holding herself back from orgasm. She has already spilled her first two shots of come deep inside her omega’s deliciously tight cunt, but it’s not time yet. She needs her knot inside her mate, needs to tie her before she’s willing to let loose completely. She’s waited too long for this to orgasm prematurely. But watching Lexa rise over her, muscles flexing and bunching with every controlled movement, skin slick with sweat and flushed with arousal… it’s almost too much. Lexa’s cunt wrapped tight around her, the slick pouring in waves over her hips, the rich scent of Lexa’s heat and want… Clarke tightens the pressure of her fingers over Lexa’s hips, swallows hard as her eyes trail from Lexa’s beautifully swollen mouth down the long, straining column of her neck, down, down…

Lexa gyrates against her, grinds hard into the knot swelling at the base of Clarke’s cock, and the slick velvet encasing her shudders as another round of aftershocks rolls through her omega. Clarke groans, because Lexa’s small, perfect breasts sway with the movement and the sheets of muscle over Lexa’s abdomen ripple with power. She can’t help but jerk her hips up, Lexa’s head rolls and her whole body sways with movement. Fullness pounds almost painfully along the length of Clarke’s cock and the needy flutter of silk wrapped around it is almost successful in milking the orgasm Clarke is barely holding back.

Fuck, Lexa is beautiful. She is a goddess, riding Clarke effortlessly even as Clarke’s hips buck and grind up. She wants Lexa to come over her again, wants to feel the wild ripple of release soak her knot, but the powerful pull of Lexa’s cunt along every inch of her cock is already too much. Clarke’s knot swells completely, throbs against Lexa’s entrance, and as Clarke reaches up to cup her omega’s breast with one hand, Lexa arches against her, grinds, and one of Clarke’s hands flies to the apex of her omega’s thighs.

She can’t hold back much longer. God, she’s not sure how she managed to hold back this long. Lexa writhes above her, and as she settles the pad of her thumb over her omega’s pulsing clit, Lexa bucks violently against her. Another wave of heat floods their hips, and Clarke moans low and deep in pleasure.

“Klark!”

Clarke swallows hard at the sound of her name on her lover’s lips and tongue. She rolls Lexa’s stiffened clit beneath her thumb, moans at the roll of Lexa’s hips over her fully-formed knot, and looks up.

Lexa’s eyes are burning with need. The silk encasing her cock shivers, pulls, Lexa’s hips roll and grind again, fullness throbs through her and she knows she’s about to fall over the edge with the single strongest, most beautiful, most incredible woman she’s ever known. Fierce joy swells in Clarke’s chest, she grinds her hips up just as Lexa grinds her hips down and Lexa orgasms with a wild scream of ecstasy.

Heat ripples around Clarke’s cock. Lexa’s walls are already incredibly tight, but they constrict and lock around her length and Clarke stiffens as the tight ring of muscle around her omega’s entrance widens just enough to start taking in the first throbbing inch of her knot.

Clarke can’t breathe. She stares up at her mate, rolls her hips with Lexa’s as her omega’s cunt ripples over her again and another wave of slick heat soaks her knot. She loves the part in Lexa’s full lips, loves the wild frizz of her curly hair splayed across her shoulders, loves the subtle flex of muscle under warm tanned skin and the half-whimper, half-growl that reverberates from her chest. She loves how Lexa rides her, loves how she fucks her, loves the will and the dominance and the fire and the strength in her. Clarke’s knot swells harder even as Lexa grinds into it and pulls its massive girth a little deeper. Lexa barks out a whimper, Clarke’s thumb stroking circles on her clit falters briefly, and Clarke bites back a moan as she feels the fullness throbbing along her length break into incredible, uncontained ogasm.

“I love you!”

Clarke’s words crack the air between them. The widest part of Clarke’s knot slides inside Lexa’s hot, wet cunt and the ring of muscle snaps shut around it. Release shatters through Clarke and she screams in pleasure as the first ripple of come races along her throbbing length to explode in Lexa’s deep, pulsing depths.

Lexa falls over her. Clarke can feel everything intensely, every vibrating inch of her mate’s skin against and around her own, every violent contraction that shudders between them, every hot spurt of come that breaks hard and fast from the head of her cock into wildly pulsing, pulling velvet. She can feel Lexa orgasm around her knot, can feel the tickle of her mate’s curls against her skin, can feel the pressure of her mate’s teeth as they close over her pulse. Clarke can feel too, with vibrant clarity, every emotion that washes through her, and every emotion that has ever washed through her: crippling pain to hear of Lexa’s death, terrified, disbelieving relief to find her standing solid and warm before her years after. The incredible wholeness of holding her mate in her arms, both of them naked and slick with sweat and lust.

It is overwhelming. The fullness pounding along her cock does not ease, the wet silk encasing her knot clenches and ripples, milking her for every never-ending shot of come that continues to explode from her tip into the delicious heat encasing her. Her heart is so full Clarke thinks she will burst, and then the pressure of her mate’s teeth over her pulse intensifies. Clarke’s mouth is closed over Lexa’s throat, over layers of promises bruised repeatedly into tanned skin and powerful muscle. She doesn’t realize how hard she has bitten until the coppery taste of blood invades her already overstimulated senses. Pain radiates through her neck and shoulder where Lexa bites back into her, but it is the most wonderful feeling Clarke has ever experienced.

She pumps her hips gently into Lexa’s, another heady wave of release steals through them together. Lexa whimpers against her shoulder, Clarke growls into the muscle caught between her teeth. She can’t breathe, but she doesn’t care to. Everything, everything, is here, in her arms, where she belongs.

Their shared orgasm feels like it will never end. Lexa grinds and writhes over her, Clarke pumps her hips into her mate’s deliciously tight cunt, shot after shot of searing come breaks from the tip of her cock to swell in Lexa’s belly. Clarke drives her fingers through her mate’s hair, wraps her other arm tightly around Lexa’s shuddering frame, and pumps harder. The tight silk shivering around her is milking every drop of come from her knot, squeezing it along every throbbing inch of her cock and Clarke feels like she is the one who has been taken completely.

Clarke can feel it with startling clarity as Lexa’s teeth over her shoulder loosen. She feels Lexa’s warm, firm tongue as it laps along the wound and shivers with pleasure as Lexa’s mouth closes over her again and suckles the painful bite gently, soothingly. She can’t let go yet, can’t loosen her own teeth around Lexa’s pulse, but Lexa’s warm breath against her skin is heaven.

“I love you too,” Lexa rasps the words into her throat, voice low and husky, and it sends a ripple of ecstasy racing down Clarke’s spine to her knot, swells fullness once again along the length of her cock and bursts in another heavy shot of come into the wet heat of her mate’s cunt. “Oh, fuck,” Lexa gasps and bucks against her, Clarke moans because she can feel her mate’s walls shift and pull another load of release greedily from her knot, “I love you, Klark. _Ai niron_ , _ai sonraun, ai houmon_.” _My love, my life, my mate._

She is so happy she could cry. And then Clarke realizes as she feels heat slip down her cheeks that she already _is_ crying. She loosens her teeth from Lexa’s shoulder slowly, gently, laps along the deep lacerations and peppers kisses over the painful bite to soothe it. They are finally tied, finally mated, and though Clarke knows that it doesn’t effectively change much between them, it means everything to her.

 

* * *

 

Klark is purring beneath her. Leksa struggles to breathe in the circle of her mate’s arms, but between the intense joy swelling in her chest and her mate’s come swelling in her belly, there is no room for air. Her shoulder and neck ache where Klark bit her, but the pain is welcome, is a relief. They are mated, finally, and Klark is crying but there is a wide smile splitting her face and Leksa knows her love is happy.

They will come together over and over for the next half an hour at least, tied together and in each other’s arms. For now, their first shared orgasm is tapering into delightful aftershocks, and Leksa shivers because Klark’s cock buried inside her is rippling in the most amazing way. She clenches around it, preening at the way her mate moans in pleasure, and gasps as another hard spurt of come shoots hot and strong into her inner walls. It starts another round of intense contractions pulsing through her, and for a little while, she and Klark are struggling, arching against each other as orgasm claims them again.

As their second orgasm fades, Klark’s fingers begin to stroke through her hair, petting her almost distractedly as she peppers kisses along the throbbing mark over her pulse. Klark is still purring, and Leksa thinks she might be purring too, because their chests are vibrating into each other and Leksa has never felt so close to Klark as she does in this moment.

“Mine,” Klark breathes into her skin, and Leksa knows, deep in her soul, that it’s true.

“Yours,” she agrees, smiling into her mate’s shoulder, “just as you are mine too.”

Klark hums her agreement. For a little while, they lie still and silent in each other’s arms. Leksa’s belly is swelling so full she thinks she might burst, and it feels so good. The knot throbbing inside her feels even better. It is finally where it belongs, tying their bodies together as surely as their hearts.

“Are you comfortable?” Klark’s voice is raspy and rough, and a little slurred with exhaustion. Leksa lifts her head and props it up on the back of her hand to look at her mate, and smiles at the expression on Klark’s face. A lazy, satisfied grin curls the corners of Klark’s mouth, her eternally blue eyes are a little unfocused and her cheeks are still flushed. She is glowing, and strands of gold hair are plastered across her forehead and to her cheeks.

Leksa nods silently after a long, easy moment. She reaches to tuck her mate’s hair behind her ear, to get it away from her face, and leans forward just enough to brush their mouths together in a sweet, languid kiss. She feels her mate’s orgasm before it throbs into her cunt, Klark’s whole body tenses beneath her and her hips pump up, she can feel the way Klark is holding her breath. It takes her breath away, and Leksa has to bury her face in the warm hollow of Klark’s throat as release steals through her again.

Every hot splash of come from Klark’s cock drenches her inner walls. It swells her belly further, and Leksa clenches her thighs over her mate’s hips as delicious release breaks her apart all over again. She wants every drop inside her, pulls it in greedily and moans at the way it makes Klark buck harder into her. She never wants this to stop, never wants it to end. She never wants the mark bitten deep in her neck to stop throbbing, never wants to stop feeling the way Klark’s chest and stomach tighten and flex under her, or the way Klark’s arms tighten around her, or the way Klark’s fingers fist her hair.

But the orgasm fades again. Leksa shudders into her mate’s embrace, sweeps kisses from the ball of Klark’s shoulder to her jaw and back down again, and sinks just a little further into her mate.

“Klark?” Leksa’s voice is muffled against Klark’s shoulder. Her mate hums to show she’s listening, her fingers stroke through Leksa’s hair, and Leksa almost forgets her thought at the sweetness of the gesture. She draws in a deep breath, holds her mate’s scent in her lungs for as long as she can before slowly letting it back out again, and trusts that Klark’s scent will forever be with her, be a part of her, be around her. “This is not weakness,” Leksa sighs after a minute. She’s unsure if Klark still remembers the first time Leksa almost admitted her feelings, but realizes she could never forget when a puff of air bursts against her hair.

“No, Lexa,” Klark’s voice is thick, Leksa can feel a lump swell in her mate’s throat and smooths kisses into it until it relaxes. “No, it’s not.”

Eventually, their orgasms taper and weaken, until Klark’s knot shrinks and slides out of Leksa’s well used cunt with a soft, wet ‘pop’. Their shared release slips out with it in thin rivers and trickles. Klark rolls them over onto their sides and tucks a hand between Leksa’s thighs to cup her sex and keep every drop of her seed inside Leksa. The protective, possessive gesture starts a flurry of emotion in Leksa’s chest, and instead of rising to brew and drink her tea, she leans into her mate’s embrace and kisses her warmly on the mouth.

They are both exhausted. Klark can barely keep her eyes open. It is late, and they have both had busy, full days and an active night. Klark’s arm around her is heavy and Leksa wishes she could forget her tea and simply melt into her mate and fall asleep, but without the tea, pregnancy is inevitable.

“Don’t go,” Klark whispers in her ear, her voice rough with exhaustion. Leksa hums contentedly at the way Klark nuzzles her throat. Their scents have both changed tonight, intermingled completely and permanently, and she knows her mate is enjoying it. She knows Klark can’t get enough of it. “Please, babe, don’t drink your tea.”

Leksa stiffens. Klark’s arm around her tightens, the hand cupping her sex clasps over it more firmly, and Klark licks into the throbbing mark she bit into her shoulder. Leksa’s arms fit between them, not because she wants to push her mate away, but because suddenly she needs to feel completely enclosed, completely safe. There is a box in Leksa’s heart, one she made when Kostia died, and it is filled with all the dreams and wishes and wants she’d ever entertained: of running her own forge, of loving Kostia, then Klark, fully and completely, taking a second of her own, of raising a family. She has not opened it, has not examined it, in many, many years. Even after her death, even after Klark found her in Ollon’s smith in Polis, she has been too afraid.

“You want a baby?” It is breathed more than whispered, and Leksa is not sure Klark heard her at first, until Klark’s arm around her tightens a little more and she feels her mate nod slowly against her. Against her will, images of herself, round with child, begin to cloud her mind. Flashes of a little body, with blue eyes and curly brown hair, race through her imagination, squealing in Klark’s voice and leaping into her arms. Thoughts of Klark’s laugh beside her, of her weight enveloping them both while they cuddle in bed or on the floor together, sit heavy in her heart.

“Maybe more than one?” Klark’s rough voice breaks the train of Leksa’s thoughts. The child in her head multiplies into varying mixes of her and Klark, and Leksa buries her face completely in her mate’s throat. She sucks in their shared scent, they smell like the forest, like the earth, together, and it is more comforting than anything else Leksa has ever experienced. “How many?” Leksa chokes out, before lifting her face to look into her mate’s eyes.

They are the ocean, deep blue and glittering. There is so much hope in Klark’s expression, so much raw need it threatens to take Leksa’s breath away. Leksa thinks she will forever be losing her breath as long as Klark is hers. A tiny smile plays at the corner of Klark’s mouth, a soft, uncertain chuckle breaks the air between them.

“Six?”

“No.”

Klark looks crestfallen, and Leksa leans in to press an apologetic kiss to her mate’s lips. Six is too many, and Leksa still loves her work at the forge – _her_ forge. She still wants to have the time to take on a second, maybe two, to teach them the art of smithing. Six children will sap all her time and energy, and will be far too many.

“Four.”

Leksa grins into her mate’s mouth. She almost hates saying ‘no’ again, and the tone of her mate’s voice, hopeful and assertive at once, spreads a hazy warmth in her chest. “Still no,” she chuckles, and cuddles a little closer to her alpha to peck tiny kisses along Klark’s strong jaw, “how about one?”

“Nope,” the shake of Klark’s head turns Leksa’s kisses into a game as she tries to brush them lightly into her mate’s skin and instead winds up clamping her teeth over the line of Klark’s jaw to hold her still. Leksa can feel the vibrations of her mate’s laugh in her chest. “At least two. I’ve always been jealous of Bell and Octavia’s relationship. I want our kids to have siblings.”

_Our kids_. The words take root in Leksa’s heart and grow into her, wind around her bones and her heart in vines that she knows she will never be able to shake free. _Our kids_. She knows she wants this, and not because of her omega instincts to breed. She shudders in Klark’s arms, tucks her head under Klark’s chin and curls into her. She wants so badly, and allowing herself to want this much, this deeply, makes her feel vulnerable and scared. But Klark’s arms around her are safety. Klark’s scent, forever mingled in her own, is strength.

“Lexa?” Klark’s voice is courage, and Leksa tilts her head up minutely to look at the woman she loves more than her own skin. There is concern in her mate’s deep blue eyes, but it disappears as Leksa purrs into her and nips at her chin reassuringly. A few minutes pass between them in silence as they consider the implications of their conversation.

“What about my forge?” Leksa’s voice is softer and more uncertain than she intended. She holds her breath when Klark holds hers, then looks up at Klark again, her eyebrows knit into a frown because her forge is non-negotiable. She must keep it, must run it, must train seconds. It is _hers_ , and Leksa loves her work, and loves being such a valued member of their people. She loves being such an integral part of their village, without having to carry the burdens of leadership.

Klark looks down at her and worries her lower lip, until Leksa reaches up to smooth a kiss gently into it.

“What about your forge?” Klark answers her question with one of her own. “I’m not asking you to leave it,” she continues quickly, as if suddenly understanding Leksa’s meaning, “I’d never ask you to leave it.”

“Okay…” Leksa sighs, not entirely sure she understands now, because someone will have to take care of the baby when it’s born and she will not bring the child into such a dangerous environment while she is distracted with her work.

Klark presses a warm kiss into Leksa’s forehead, and Leksa relaxes against her, though she isn’t sure when she tensed to begin with. “We’ll figure that part out,” Klark says, voice sure and steady and strong, “most of what I do all day is just meetings and going out to the farms to help out anyway. I can keep the baby with me most days and we can figure out the rest. If Octavia and Lincoln can do it, so can we.”

Leksa thinks about all this for a little while. She’d be lying if she said it doesn’t appeal to her. Maybe it’s just her heat, but the idea of carrying Klark’s child fills her with a wild, indescribable kind of joy. She doesn’t think it’s just her heat though. The warmth in her chest and in her belly as she thinks about raising a baby with her mate…

She nuzzles into Klark’s throat. It’s a little frightening to think about, but Klark is strength and courage and passion, and she thinks carrying her child will only add to their joy. It is apparent how deeply Klark wants this, and Leksa has thought about it too, many times before and after her death. And if she can keep her forge and raise this baby _with_ Klark…

“Two?” Leksa offers after a long, thoughtful moment, and her heart skips a beat as the long breath she didn’t know Klark was holding rushes past the shell of her ear and Klark’s arm around her tightens to the point that Leksa is finding it difficult to breathe.

“Two,” Klark whispers in her ear, and Leksa can hear the grin splitting her face wide open, “two.”

And then Klark is breathing kisses along her jaw-line, her hands are running across her back and Leksa closes her eyes because her skin is fire under Klark’s touch. She was exhausted before, but her body is waking up again and warmth is flushing low between her legs. It’s as if this plan to make a baby has kicked her heat into overdrive, because suddenly she feels far too empty, and a heavy kind of ache is settling in her core. She wants – _needs_ – Klark’s cock again. She needs to feel her belly swell with her mate’s come, needs to give the baby they both want a chance to be conceived, even if it’s extremely likely it already is.

She pushes Klark onto her back gently, and Klark stares up at her quizzically for a moment before Leksa bends over her chest to sweep kisses along the curve of each breast. “Are you too tired to make our first baby now?” Leksa grins into the nipple pebbling already against her upper lip and scrapes her hand across her mate’s belly to feel the sharp breath Klark sucks in. Though Klark does not answer with words, Leksa can see by the sudden stiffening of her alpha’s swollen clit, by the way it swells suddenly into the air, that Klark is not too tired at all.

“Fuck, Lexa,” Klark’s voice is a cracked rasp, her pupils are dilating to hide the smoldering blue of the iris and her cheeks are flushing with arousal. Leksa feels an answering pull between her legs, and their shared scent billows between them as a heavy rush of heat drips between her thighs. Leksa licks around the soft skin of Klark’s nipple, never once tearing her gaze from her mate’s, before sucking the pebbled tip in between her lips and lashing the sensitive bundle of nerves with her tongue. It makes Klark arch under her, and Leksa growls in satisfaction to feel Klark’s fingers dive through her hair. Klark’s cock twitches and lengthens, and Leksa reaches down to fold her fingers around the base and give it a gentle squeeze.

Klark moans. “Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”

Pleasuring Klark this way, Leksa finds, is deeply satisfying. The ache in her core deepens, her walls flutter with need, but she loves seeing Klark this way. She suckles and teases the nipple between her teeth and pumps her alpha’s hardening cock slowly with her fist and rises over her mate to gain better leverage.

Then Klark growls, and Leksa freezes. It is a low, threatening sound, and sends a shiver of arousal running down Leksa’s spine. Leksa raises her head to look her mate more squarely in the eye and gives the cock swelling in her hand another slow, lazy tug. It is a challenge that Leksa does not simply roll over and give all control over to her alpha, and it makes Klark growl softly again. Leksa grins, bends over her lover’s chest and swipes her tongue flat in a broad, hard lick across Klark’s nipple.

The low growl in Klark’s chest grows into a roar. Then Klark’s hands leave her hair and before Leksa can fully comprehend what is happening, Klark has flipped them over so that she is towering above her and Leksa lies flat on her back. The aggression in Klark’s rough treatment of her, the fire in her eyes, slices arousal through Leksa’s abdomen. But the wicked grin Klark gives her has Leksa whimpering with need. She lifts her chin to expose her throat in submission, because _fuck_ she loves it when Klark’s dominant alpha side comes out to play.

Klark pulls her hardened cock free of Leksa’s grip and gives it a hard tug on her own. It is swollen to its full length, hard and throbbing already, but Klark is not ready to bury it in Leksa’s slick heat yet. Instead, Klark bends over her and Leksa has to bite back a moan as Klark’s hot, wet mouth closes over her own nipple. She bucks into Klark, the hollow ache in her core intensifies instantly, but then one of Klark’s hands cups her sex while the other cups her breast and Leksa can’t breathe as pleasure rocks through her. She can’t even moan her mate’s name, because she’s overwhelmed by the two fingers sliding past her entrance into her cunt, by the thumb and index finger pinching and rolling one nipple between them, by the warmth of Klark’s mouth sucking hard over the other.

“Fuck –,” Leksa can’t quite form her plea as Klark’s thumb strokes over her clit. She bites her lip instead and jolts into her mate’s fingers in an attempt to force them to start moving. She’s already growing quickly overstimulated, but she needs more already. She is a volcano, heat is spilling over into the palm of Klark’s hand and jolts of searing pleasure scream from both nipples at once straight to her straining, pulsing clit held tightly beneath her mate’s thumb. “Fuck – oh, Klark – fuck me!”

But Klark seems intent on torturing her instead. Leksa’s fingers wind in Klark’s hair and Klark looks up at her, grinning around her breast, and only strokes her throbbing clit slowly under her thumb while she presses against her front wall with two still fingers. “Klark, please!” Leksa bucks her hips, trying to force movement, and finds herself instantly trapped beneath her alpha’s weight.

The sensation of Klark’s deep growl against her breast doubles the need searing through her. A pulse of heat soaks the bed beneath them, and as Leksa tries to wrap her leg around her mate’s back, she finds quick resistance, and the growl rolling in Klark’s chest deepens.

Klark is taking control now. Leksa turns to putty in her mate’s arms, because as much as she loves to take control sometimes, she loves to be dominated like this by Klark even more. Especially during her heats. Leksa growls back, because challenging her mate only makes her more aggressive, and Leksa loves it when Klark is rough with her.

It has the desired effect. The air in Leksa’s lungs dissipates into nothing as Klark surges over her, tearing Leksa’s hands from her hair and trapping them firmly over their heads beneath one hand of her own. This time, Leksa strains with all her might against the hard hand holding her wrists together, but Klark is immoveable. She feels her mate’s thumb draw an agonizingly slow circle around her clit and squirms, because _fuck_ she could come already but she doesn’t want to give Klark the satisfaction.

Then Klark straddles her, trapping Leksa’s hips beneath her own. The hard weight of her alpha’s cock rests against the inside of Leksa’s thigh, teasing her with the pearls of wet beading at the tip. Klark bends over her to lick broad and flat over Leksa’s nipple again, and she slowly starts to move her fingers in Leksa’s slick cunt. Her walls flutter and pull, and Leksa is so hollow, she _needs_ the throbbing muscle heavy against the inside of her thigh.

“Oh fuck,” the whimper bursts from between Leksa’s lips before she has a chance to bite it back. Klark growls, her fingers pick up speed, the thumb trapping Leksa’s clit strokes her hard and Leksa writhes. Orgasm swells in her front wall, and the rhythm her mate picks up guarantees that Leksa will come whether she wants to or not within minutes. “Oh fuck!”

Two fingers become three. Leksa strains hard against her alpha’s grip, need floods her belly, the whimpers and whines she’s been trying so hard to contain break free and the fingers Klark is pumping hard into her cunt are driving her completely crazy. She needs more, Klark sucks her nipple in between her teeth and flicks it hard with her tongue, and Leksa bucks into her mate’s hand desperate for release. She’s forgotten her decision not to come just to spite her alpha, because denying herself the orgasm hovering just outside of her reach is too torturous to even consider. She can feel her heart pound in every inch of her skin.

Klark fucks into her hard, driving her fingers deep into Leksa’s cunt to the knuckle, and curls her fingers roughly to hit Leksa’s swollen front wall at just the angle to make Leksa scream. Her release hits her hard, slick heat washes through her to pour into her alpha’s palm. The scent is intense, Leksa’s body is a live wire, she sobs with relief as Klark continues to fuck her harder, faster, with her fingers. Klark’s growl deepens, rises, until Leksa can feel it vibrate with the hard pulse pounding along her walls.

She needs the cock twitching against her inner thigh. She needs it like she needs air to breathe, needs it like it is an extension of her. And the only way she will get it is by submitting completely, fully, to her alpha, her mate. Leksa struggles against Klark’s grip as her orgasm continues to shred through her, and she knows that Klark is growing desperate too by the harsh pant that has replaced Klark’s mouth and tongue over her nipple.

“Klark, please,” Leksa begs, not ready to surrender so fully yet, “please –,”

Leksa’s cut off by another deep, rolling growl. She succumbs immediately, instinctively. The instant she lifts her chin to expose her neck, she is flipped over onto her stomach and Klark’s fingers are replaced immediately but the flared, throbbing head of her cock.

This time, Klark does not wait. She is not gentle, and she is not slow. She takes her in a single smooth, deep thrust and clamps her teeth over Leksa’s pulse, over the mark she already made a little over an hour ago, and Leksa almost passes out with pleasure.

Finally, she is not hollow. Hard, throbbing muscle splits her open, twitching into the orgasm that hasn’t yet faded into aftershocks. Klark’s heavy weight over her prevents Leksa from moving, and she can’t tilt her hips up or wrap her legs around her mate’s waist to hold her. She is completely at Klark’s mercy, and she loves it. Klark’s arms wrap firmly around her, her teeth worry at the mark in Leksa’s neck, and Leksa whines with pleasure as Klark picks up a hard, powerful rhythm.

Leksa can’t stop coming. The slide of pounding cock as it sweeps through her cunt in and out intensifies her orgasm and leaves her shuddering under her mate’s embrace. Klark fucks deep into her and pulls out nearly all the way before thrusting hard back in, and every pump of her hips drags the flared head of her cock against the sensitive spot along Leksa’s front wall. Klark’s chest against her back vibrates with a low, deep, continuous growl. Leksa revels in the feeling of being mounted by her mate, of being fucked by her mate. It has been a long time since sex between them was rough like this and Leksa has missed it.

 

* * *

 

Clarke is soaked in her mate’s come. Their shared scent is driving her crazy, and she feels her inner alpha break through every last shred of control she’s ever kept firmly over it. Lexa has not stopped orgasming, and the hard pull of her omega’s cunt as it squeezes around her cock is threatening to make Clarke come much earlier than she wants to. Her knot swells hard and fast at the base of her cock. She has to slow down if she wants to last.

She yanks herself up, pulling out hard as she rises, and the whine that explodes from Leksa’s throat almost tears an answering whine from her own. The air that wraps around her length is cold after Lexa’s clinging heat, and Klark hurries to pull Leksa up to her knees as well and drive herself back inside. Lexa rises without a fight, raises her hips to angle them against the tip of Clarke’s cock, but doesn’t push back to take it. Lexa is submitting to her completely, and knowing this only drives fullness to throb harder along her length. Her knot is fully formed and pounding, and Clarke drives herself in a single hard thrust back into the delicious, wet heat of her mate’s cunt.

Clarke is not sure which of them moans first. Lexa is _still_ coming, her velvety walls flutter hard around her, pull her deeper in. Lexa’s slick entrance is grasping for the fully-formed knot at the base, and Clarke starts a punishing rhythm to prevent Lexa from latching on completely. Lexa cries out, her walls clamp down hard around Clarke’s cock, but Clarke’s not done yet. She continues to fuck into her mate, and when she circles Lexa’s hips with one hand and strokes a slow circle into her soaked clit, Lexa shudders against her and her arms quake like she might collapse under the intensity of her orgasm.

“Fuck, Klark,” Lexa’s voice is weak and wavery, “please, I can’t –,” Lexa’s begs devolve into whimpers as Clarke’s fingers and hips pick up speed. She won’t last much longer, but she’s waiting for something else first… she’s aching for something else first…

The clinging heat around Clarke’s cock convulses. A wild shout explodes from Lexa’s lips. Clarke’s hips slam hard into Lexa’s and the ring of muscle at her entrance swallows the entirety of Clarke’s knot smoothly and completely. Clarke freezes, stunned, as she finds herself locked in Lexa’s flooded depths.

And then a single, brutal clench around her cock steals the breath from Clarke’s lungs and the release pounding along the aching length of her cock.

Finally, Lexa pushes back gently just enough for Clarke to fall back over her heels. Lexa settles into her lap, shuddering with pleasure, whimpering and moaning in a way that crawls under Clarke’s skin. Clarke closes an arm around her mate, nips into the angry red marks ringing her neck and starts another, gentler rhythm over Lexa’s clit with her fingers. Orgasm throbs through Clarke so hard and so fast she can barely breathe and cannot think. Her hips jerk up into Lexa’s, her fingers circuit the straining bud of her mate’s clit instinctively, she holds Lexa tightly against her and gives herself completely over to every intense sensation that is breaking her apart from the inside out.

Clinging heat strokes every inch of her cock, from the knot up. It squeezes along the length, driving the heavy jets of come that race through Clarke’s cock. Fullness pounds in and around her, and Clarke feels the inexplicable need to drive deeper in. Firm, dense warmth is wrapped so firmly around her that every twitch of her member ricochets from the pulsing head of her cock, down to her knot and back up again. Lexa’s cunt pulls heavy jet after heavy jet of come forcefully from her, until the pressure surrounding her becomes almost unbearable. Clarke can feel her mate’s belly swell under her hand, and Lexa’s whimpers grow so thin and so cracked, she eases the force of her thumb over Lexa’s clit and slows her circuits to complete stop.

Clarke pumps her hips into Lexa’s even as she slowly, carefully, eases them both to lie down together. She tries at first to lie them on their sides, she knows the swell of Lexa’s belly will make any other position uncomfortable, but their orgasm is so powerful, neither of them can stop pumping against each other, and the surge of their hips is strong enough that brief, intense flares of pain break through them as Clarke’s knot strains against the locked entrance of Lexa’s cunt. So Clarke pushes her omega onto her belly on the bed and pumps her hips hard into Lexa’s backside.

Lexa’s solid, tense body beneath hers is incredibly comforting. Their orgasm has not faded yet, and Clarke is speechless as Lexa’s clinging heat massages another heavy stream of come from her knot. She only manages to whine and bury her face in the curve of her mate’s shoulder and bite down hard all over again. Lexa shudders beneath her. She must be exhausted, because she has been coming continuously almost since they started. It is a long time still before Lexa’s orgasm finally tapers into aftershocks, and the hard clench of her cunt around Clarke’s cock eases enough to allow Clarke to finally breathe.

Clarke pumps her hips lazily into Lexa’s and laps at the fresh marks she bit into her mate’s shoulder. Lexa hums exhaustedly, and though she’s too wasted to move or speak, Clarke knows she needs to roll over and relieve the pressure building still in her belly. So she gently, carefully eases them onto their sides together, with one hand supporting her mate’s hips and the other manipulating her mate’s shoulders. Clarke curls to trap Lexa in the curve of her body and Lexa arches slightly backward into her. She peppers kisses into Lexa’s shoulder and strokes the hard swell of Lexa’s abdomen with gentle fingers. Lexa does not know it yet, but she is already glowing like she has the sun and stars inside her and Clarke can’t believe how incredibly lucky she is that Lexa is _hers._

Fresh orgasm clenches along Clarke’s knot. She sweeps wild, stray curls from her mate’s face and kisses her cheek. “Mine,” Clarke rasps, gratified by the small smile curling at the corner of her omega’s lips. She strokes the swell of Lexa’s abdomen, and as Lexa’s hand covers her own, Clarke feels herself fall apart under the incredible weight of the love she feels for the woman in her arms and the baby she knows will grow under her fingertips. “Ours,” Clarke manages to croak out. She strokes her thumb over the swell of Lexa's belly and feels Lexa's fingers fit into the spaces between her own before overwhelming release claims them again.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff and Clexa babies, as promised. Thank you all so, so much for sticking around and for sharing in this emotional rollercoaster with me. You all are the absolute best! <3

Klark still tastes like sunshine and daffodils. Even after a little over a year of being mated, even if their scents have changed irreversibly, she still tastes the same. Leksa strokes the hard nub of her mate’s clit and licks along her folds, sucking in every delicious drop of her alpha’s come while Klark writhes into her mouth.

Discovering that she is pregnant again has made Leksa incredibly horny, not that she isn’t always easily turned on by her mate. Leksa drives her tongue as deep as she can into Klark’s cunt and Klark lets out a strangled moan that pulls an answering growl of pleasure from Leksa’s throat. The tight ring of muscle around Klark’s entrance is throbbing with release, and more of Klark’s bright, sharp taste floods Leksa’s mouth. She sucks it down greedily before turning her full attention to Klark’s clit, where she sweeps circles and pulls the stiff button between her lips and teeth to help carry her alpha through her climax.

Klark’s fingers tighten in her hair. Heat spills over Leksa’s chin and she can’t resist burying her face between her mate’s thighs again to swallow down still more of her orgasm. Klark has always tasted irresistible to her, and has always appreciated Leksa’s thorough clean-up after making her come.

“Lexa,” Klark’s gasp sounds almost like a whine, and is music to Leksa’s ears. Leksa grins into her mate, lifts her head and props her chin on Klark’s thigh. Klark looks dazed, an idiotic grin is stretched across her flushed features, and another powerful wave of adoration sweeps through Leksa at the sight. She didn’t believe it was possible to fall this deeply in love with anyone, but every day it’s like she falls harder, loves Klark more. “Come here,” Klark’s voice is soft, but insistent, and her hands in Leksa’s hair tug her up gently. Leksa’s knee throbs a little with the movement, but Leksa ignores it to drape herself over her mate and curl into the warm arms that envelop her.

Gently, Klark rolls them over. Leksa shivers into the mouth trailing slow, open-mouthed kisses along her throat and moans when Klark hovers over her mating bite. Teeth nip into the sensitive mark, Leksa arches her neck and raises her chin to grant Klark a little more space. Then Klark lifts herself just enough to fit her hand between their bodies and two calloused fingers slide between Leksa’s folds. Leksa arches her hips into them, sucks in a deep breath in anticipation of what will come next and muffles a cry of pleasure as they glide across her clit, circle her entrance and thrust inside.

She’s dripping for her mate, and minutes away from release. Her cunt clamps down around the fingers pumping into her and she whimpers at the way they curl against her front wall.

“My god, you’re beautiful,” Klark’s rough voice in her ear sends a spasm of heat breaking across her spine to throb against Klark’s fingers buried deep inside her. Klark says that a lot, and every time she does, she sounds reverent, and like it’s the first time. Every time she says those words, warmth spreads in Leksa’s chest. She buries the fingers of one hand in Klark’s golden hair and wraps the other tightly around her back, holding her so close she can feel Klark’s heart beat into her own.

And then a sharp, short cry breaks the quiet of their muffled panting. Klark freezes over her and Leksa clenches her jaw, praying that it will stop on its own so that Klark can keep going. She’s so close to release already, she’s hanging over the edge, and she might cry herself if Klark doesn’t carry her over. But the cry splinters and shatters, and Leksa knows they have to stop no matter how much she wants to keep going.

Klark breathes an apologetic kiss into her skin. “To be continued,” she teases, and Leksa growls irritably at her as Klark withdraws her fingers and sucks them into her own mouth instead.

“Tell me why you wanted us to have children again?” Leksa snaps, though her irritation melts instantly into worry to hear their baby continue to cry. Klark only grins at her, kisses her cheek, and rolls off.

“She’s yours when the sun sinks,” Klark reminds her in a sing-song voice, “don’t keep our Anya waiting.”

Leksa groans, drives her fingers through her mussed curls, and forces herself to sit up. She’s glad then that, in their hurry, they hadn’t managed to get her brace completely off, and rushes to strap it more firmly on around her thigh and calf before she wipes herself off as clean as possible on the sheets and rises.

Onia’s shrieks are tearing into Leksa’s heart though, and the arousal that had threatened to swallow her whole is gone by the time she’s managed to clamber out of their bedroom and into the tiny nursery Klark had built during Leksa’s first pregnancy. Inside it is dark but for the pale sliver of moonlight peeking through the shutters. The last of the winter’s snow glitters like diamonds and throws speckles of light on the ceiling that look like stars. Onia’s cries slow and quiet the instant Leksa steps foot inside, and big, wet blue eyes stare up at her, waiting to be picked up and cradled.

“Hei, pretty girl,” Leksa coos down at her daughter and lifts her carefully from her crib. She knows by the heavy fullness in her breasts that her baby is hungry again, and grins at the tiny, uncoordinated hands that paw at her chest for a nipple. But Leksa takes a moment just to breathe her baby girl’s scent in and rock her in her arms. Onia smells so sweet to her, like vanilla and honey, and a heavy wave of protective adoration washes over Leksa as she holds her.

She arranges the baby against her breast while she walks back to her bedroom. Klark is propped up against the massive wooden headboard with a sketchbook in her lap and a pencil stuck out of her mouth. The alpha grins at the sight of her mate cradling their five-month-old and raises an arm to cuddle them both while Leksa settles back into bed beside her.

“She’s hungry, isn’t she?” Klark bends over their little girl and presses a kiss to Onia’s forehead, and Leksa hums her confirmation while she presses a kiss into her mate’s hair. Onia’s mouth latches on to a nipple, and the instant she starts to suck Leksa’s eyes fill with tears.

She has no idea why breastfeeding makes her cry, but it does, every single time. Klark laughs when she lifts her head and sees it.

“Shof op, yu,” Leksa growls, but there is no threat and no anger in it. She huffs into the kiss Klark presses to her lips and cuddles into her mate as Klark’s leg settles over both of hers and Klark’s arm rests over her belly.

“You’re going to be crying a lot for a while,” Klark grins, “the minute this one’s done breastfeeding, we’ll have another little one on our hands.”

“You can feed the next one on your own, then,” Leksa growls back, lips curled into a snarl that looks and feels too much like a smile to be anything but. Klark only laughs and kisses her again, before brushing away her tears from her cheeks with the backs of her knuckles. She knows that Leksa loves feeding their baby at night, and knows that every growl and grimace and snarl are just a front. What she doesn’t know, Leksa thinks as she settles her head into the crook of her mate’s shoulder and strokes her baby’s back, is that Leksa can’t stop thinking that three might be the perfect number. Hearing the news from Abi that she’s pregnant again filled her with so much excitement and delight, she thinks she might like to hear it one more time before they decide to stop.

And having Onia was one of the best things that Leksa has ever done.

Klark draws patterns into Leksa’s belly with a calloused finger, and between her mate’s warmth and the gentle rhythm of her daughter feeding at her breast, Leksa thinks she could fall asleep then and there. She is surrounded with warm and comforting scents: Onia’s sweet vanilla scent and the protective alpha pheromones Klark is pumping out subconsciously. Before Onia, they smelled like the forest, but now, they smell together like a massive field of flowers, drenched in sunlight and growing sweet from the rich earth.

“Do you think it’ll be a boy or a girl this time?” Klark asks her sleepily. She’s still tracing patterns across Leksa’s belly with her fingers, but her palm lies flat there too, warm and soothing. Leksa hums an ambiguous response, and Klark chuckles softly into her hair.

When Onia is done and turns her face away, Klark bends over them both to gather the sleepy child into her own arms. Leksa grumbles, a little jealous of all the time Klark gets to spend with their kid during the day, but lets her because she’s boneless now with exhaustion. “I’ve got her,” Klark whispers into her ear and brushes a soft kiss into her cheek before lifting off the bed, “get some sleep babe, you look exhausted.”

She is. She had never imagined how much work running a forge and mothering a baby at the same time would be. And though she wouldn’t give it up for the world, she feels sleep pull her under as Klark’s weight leaves the bed. For a very little while, she dreams of their children, all three piled on top of Klark while they play, shrieking with joy for their Nomon to join them.

 

* * *

 

Lexa is already asleep by the time Clarke rearranges Anya in her arms. She smiles down at her mate, bends to kiss her hair one more time, and bounces Anya carefully as she makes her way back to the nursery.

Anya coos up at her, babbling nonsensically the way she does right after a feeding, and Clarke babbles nonsensically right back down at her. She knows Anya will drop off to sleep right after she’s been burped, and after she’s been completely enclosed in a soft shirt drenched in her mother and sire’s scent. It is warmer in Anya’s nursery than anywhere else in the house, even in the middle of winter, with the salvaged and repaired space heater Raven installed under the window for them the year before.

“I love you, baby girl,” Clarke murmurs into her daughter’s soft little head, where thin auburn curls begin to grow. Clarke is happy that her first child has her eyes, but she’s over the moon that she’s got her mate’s beautiful hair. Anya is perfection, and Clarke can’t wait for it to be matched by the baby growing in her mate’s belly. She knows Lexa has drawn the line at two, but she thinks she might be able to convince Lexa to raise their limit to three. Judging by the way Lexa was glowing this afternoon when they discovered in the hospital that she’s pregnant again, by her enthusiastic reaction that led to a very extended lovemaking session in bed, and the jealous pout on her full lips when Clarke took Anya from her arms to put her back in her crib, Clarke thinks it might not be terribly difficult to get Lexa to change her mind.

She spends a little extra time cuddling her daughter after Anya has been burped and changed and is ready for bed again. She spends all day with her daughter, but all that time is never enough. There are days Clarke wonders how Lexa manages to spend so much of her day away from their daughter, until Lexa comes home grumpy and all that will lift her mood are Anya’s babbles and Anya’s smiles.

Clarke kisses each of Anya’s palms as she hums her to sleep again. Anya’s eyes are already closed, she is already drifting off, she always gets so sleepy after being fed, and she’s still young enough to sleep for most of the day. Clarke sighs and arranges her daughter in her crib, wrapped in a warm, snug shirt carrying her parents’ scent, and pulls a tiny foot out to give it a last goodnight kiss right on the sole. Anya’s tiny fingers and tiny toes have been a particular focus of Clarke’s attention and adoration since she was born, they’re just so small and so perfect.

“We both love you so much, sweet girl,” she murmurs one last time, before covering Anya’s foot up again and tiptoeing back to bed.

When she gets there, she finds Lexa clutching her sketchbook and snoring softly into the pillow. It’s turned to the last page Clarke had been working on, with Anya’s tiny feet sketched into the foreground and her bright, sunny smile in the background. Clarke grins and thinks Leksa might actually decide to take a day off the next day to spend some much needed time with her family. She knows her mate is planning on handing the forge off to her young second for the day soon anyway, to see how he handles the responsibility and the business on his own.

And in case Lexa has decided to go to work the next morning anyway… Clarke crawls into bed beside her mate, fingers tickling up Lexa’s waist feather-light and teasing. Lexa stirs under her, groans tiredly, and Clarke almost feels guilty for waking her omega when she’s so clearly tired. But then Lexa’s arms surround her and Lexa buries her face in her shoulder and Clarke can feel teeth nipping gently into her mating bite.

“I miss her,” Lexa sighs into her skin, and Clarke chuckles while she pulls her sketchbook out from between them and deposits it on the table beside their bed.

“I know,” Clarke whispers and bends to trail slow, open-mouthed kisses along her mate’s throat, “so take the day off tomorrow. I can go to the forge for you and make sure Peter is doing okay.”

She slides between her mate’s legs, licks along Lexa’s throat and nips at the marks decorating her neck. Lexa shivers under her, her fingers tighten in Clarke’s hair, and she thinks she just might be succeeding in waking her mate up all over again. Just for a little longer. She brushes her hand over Lexa’s mound, allows her thumb to linger briefly over Lexa’s clit, and grins when Lexa rewards her with a low, soft moan. Lexa is tired, but not too tired to pick up where they left off.

“Before dawn,” Lexa breathes into her hair, then pulls their faces apart enough to look her in the eye, “he’s only ten, and this is the first time I let him take care of the day’s work alone. You’ll check on him every few hours.”

Clarke nods firmly and brushes their noses together, “before dawn. And I’ll come get you if he gets overwhelmed,” she murmurs, and dips her fingers slowly between Lexa’s folds to find that Lexa is still wet for her, or wet for her again, “which he won’t be. Because you’re a damn good teacher, Lexa. And an even better mom.”

Clarke stops talking then, because talking about work and seconds and children is _not_ conducive to what she has in mind. Lexa drops the subject too, satisfied by Clarke’s reassurances, and arches into Clarke’s teasing fingers.

She takes Lexa slower this time, with the intent of drawing out her omega’s pleasure for as long as she can. Clarke settles over her mate, strokes circles into Lexa’s stiffening clit and slips a finger into wet heat as she bends to take her mate’s mouth in a long, slow kiss. Lexa moans into her, arches her hips, and wraps her arms around Clarke’s shoulders, content to let her set the pace this time. Clarke builds her up slowly, keeps the pace of her thumb over Lexa’s clit light and leisurely and strokes first one finger, then two, in and out of her mate’s slippery heat. Lexa pants into her mouth, moans softly, arches into her, but their sealed lips never part.

Though Clarke takes her time, Lexa was so close to release when they got interrupted, it doesn’t take long to bring her back to the edge again. Clarke massages her mate’s throbbing front wall, circles her pulsing clit with her thumb and swallows each of Lexa’s cries as she tumbles over the edge. Heat spills over into Clarke’s hand, pools in her palm and soaks the bed beneath.

Lexa shudders into her arms. Clarke doesn’t stop kissing her, doesn’t stop pumping her fingers gently and stroking circles into her mate’s clit until her heavy, rolling contractions ease into aftershocks. Lexa is breathless, her lips swollen with kisses, her cheeks flushed by her intense climax, when Clarke finally raises her head to smile softly down at her.

“I love you,” she whispers down at Lexa, who smiles back and hums incoherently in response. She’s asleep before Clarke has withdrawn her fingers from her entrance, and Clarke licks them clean as she stares down at her mate.

Then Clarke bends to sweep butterfly-light kisses along her mate’s jaw, and doubles to press a long, lingering kiss to her mate’s abdomen. She flattens her palm across smooth, warm skin. Under her hand, Clarke thinks, a little miracle is growing. Their little miracle. It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy, with blue eyes or green, brown curls or blonde locks. She loves it, and her mate, and their Anya, so much more than words can express.

She falls asleep with her head on Lexa’s belly, and wakes to Lexa’s fingers stroking affectionately through her hair just before dawn. While Lexa feeds their daughter, Clarke hurries to the forge to check on Peter, who does a fine job of keeping the smithy from burning down, regardless of how nervous he is all day.

Their second child is a girl. Clarke and Lexa argue over the name for a week before deciding that Willow is perfect. Peter is as excited to meet her as he was to meet Anya, and Anya stares at her baby sister completely entranced, before reaching out to pick up her tiny hand with a little one of her own and hold it.

  

* * *

 

The year after Wilou’s birth is the year the new Commander completes her training. She is seventeen, and a force to be reckoned with. Leksa has met her a couple of times, and Mona reminds her a little too much of herself at that age, but when she and Klark are invited specifically to Polis that fall to attend the ceremony installing her fully as Commander, Leksa agrees immediately to go. It has been a few years now since she’s been to Polis – once her home, though now Camp Jaha is more home than Polis has ever been.

Onia is almost three and Wilou is a little over a year old. They are thick as thieves, with wild laughs they seem to have picked up from Reiven (who, despite her insistence that she hates children, can’t seem to stop hanging around these two) and a penchant for starting tickle wars with their Nomon every chance they get. Where Onia inherited her sire’s blue eyes and Nomon’s brown curls, Wilou is almost the spitting image of Lexa. She has Klark’s chin though, and Klark’s voice, and the way she crinkles her nose and smiles reminds everyone who sired her. She smells like the first rain, and Leksa can’t believe how deeply she adores both her daughters.

Wilou squirms in her arms impatiently, she’s been far too excited throughout the whole trip to see Polis and the fierce new Commander. Onia sits beside Leksa much more quietly, with one hand on her Nomon’s thigh, staring about her with big, curious blue eyes. Klark has left them for a few minutes to talk to one of Polis’s elders, but Leksa has caught her glancing over at them longingly multiple times.

The Fall Festival is about to start. Because this year is special, all the elders from all the different clans will gather by the massive pit constructed in the city’s center, and they will tell stories of their history since the bombs. Leksa has heard these stories millions of times, but the elders are master story-tellers, and she can’t help feeling a little excited along with her daughters to hear them again.

“When will it start?” Onia looks up at Leksa, her eyes are big and round in her chubby face and her expression is so serious and somber, Leksa wants to laugh.

“Soon, goufa. But I think you should go save your Mama,” Leksa bends to kiss her eldest’s hair and points to where Klark is shifting impatiently on her feet and glancing over at them anxiously, “she looks like she needs your help.”

“Mama!” Wilou giggles wildly and makes a grab for Leksa’s hair with both chubby little hands. Onia gives her sister a sidelong look, as if she has said something profound, then rises and toddles off toward Klark. Leksa only clucks at her youngest and peels Wilou’s hands from her hair as gently as she can. She doesn’t see the massive grounder that approaches her from the side, and the air is so thick with the scents of hundreds of people, she doesn’t pick his out from the crowd until he clears his throat and rumbles her name.

“Leksa.”

Leksa snaps her head around to find Ollon standing over her. She starts to rise, to greet him, but he puts out a hand and squats beside her. Wilou squeals in delight and reaches for him, but Leksa holds her daughter firmly in her lap and constrains her arms with one of her own.

“Ollon. You look well.”

He looks the same. His great, bushy beard is slightly singed around the edges and soot still stains his fingers and his clothes. His dark eyes regard her thoughtfully for a moment, then look down to the squirming infant held tightly in her grip, and his face creases into a hesitant smile, “You look better.”

“Motherhood agrees with me,” Leksa smiles back briefly, and Ollon looks a little startled to see it. He holds out a hand for Wilou to examine, but Wilou is far more interested by the shrubbery of hair growing on his face and ignores it.

“No, Leksa,” Ollon rumbles after a while, flinty eyes darting across her features and to Wilou clasped firmly in her arms, “you glow. Happiness agrees with you.”

For a few minutes, Leksa doesn’t know what to say. She regards him, rearranges Wilou on her lap, then promptly gives up on the child and allows her to reach toward Ollon to tug at his beard. If nothing else, it breaks the tension between them, and Leksa is a little shocked to see the way Ollon laughs and allows her to play. He was always terse with her, a little short and a little ill-tempered.

“I had a son, once,” he explains when he catches her looking, and gently disengages Wilou’s fingers from his beard to stand when he catches Klark making her way toward them. Leksa looks up to smile at her mate, who carries Onia slung over her hip.

“Ollon,” Klark’s voice is a little wary, and there is tension in her body, but she smiles a little hesitantly at Ollon and eases into her seat beside Leksa. Ollon nods at the alpha politely.

“Heda Klark,” his voice is back to being gruff and he holds his hands behind his back formally as he regards her, “I only stopped to say hello to my old assistant.”

A long moment of awkwardness passes. Klark shrugs her shoulders and nods her head, and Ollon shifts uncomfortably on his feet before turning and walking away. Peter creeps in to join them, though he sits on the floor at Lexa’s feet. Belomi joins them last, just as the crowds gathered around the fire pit begin to settle, and the Elders file through the narrow path cordoned for their use.

Leksa leans into her mate as the Elders start their story. Wilou and Onia are both quiet at the same time for a change, and appear enraptured, absorbed by stories a hundred years old. Klark grins, finger-brushes Onia’s hair with one hand and wraps an arm around Leksa with the other.

At first, the stories are familiar. Leksa has heard them a thousand times, has memorized them as part of her duties as Heda. She knows how the old people of what was once The United States of America scattered and took what shelter they could when the bombs fell. She knows the stories of a rocket shot into space. She knows of the billions of deaths the bombs caused, the scattering of the survivors, the diseases and the mutations and the horrors they endured for generations afterward. She knows how small encampments became many dozens of separate clans, knows how the strongest warriors of those clans united them to twelve.

She knows of the legends the elders weave: of dragons and paunas and the river serpents that still plague their waters to this day. And she knows of the Mountain Men that stole out of Mount Weather sixty years ago, and gave birth to the ripas.

She knows the story of the Heda who united the twelve clans under a single banner. She knows of the people that fell from the sky. Leksa reaches for her mate’s hand, tangles their fingers, and listens with attention as rapt as those of her yongon sprawled across her lap and Klark’s, as their story is being told.

They call her The Uniter. Klark’s arm around her draws Leksa in closer, and Leksa feels warm kisses breathed into her shoulder. This story is making her skin feel cold and hot in quick alterations, as they tell about The Uniter’s first lover, an omega who healed at her Heda’s side and was stolen away and butchered by the Ice Queen. Her heart slams irregularly in her chest when the elders tell of the first alliance between Sky and Earth. Onia looks up at her Nomon then with eyes dark from the night’s shadows and puts a warm, clammy hand on her chest.

“That’s you, Nono?”

Her voice is so small. Leksa looks down at her daughter and pulls her bottom lip between her teeth anxiously. Onia knows some of the stories. She knows the beginning, and she knows the end, but she doesn’t know what comes between and Leksa is nervous now for her to hear it. But she will hear it eventually, and their smart, precocious Onia understand far too much for her age.

“Yes, goufa. That’s me.”

Onia clambers from her sire’s lap onto her mother’s, unoccupied now that Wilou has crawled into Peter’s, curled up there, and promptly fallen asleep. Onia stands on wobbly legs and examines Leksa’s features in the flickering amber firelight, one hand raised to touch the lines in her Nomon’s face.

“But you’re not Heda anymore?”

“No, An, I’m not.” Leksa’s voice feels tight. Onia plops down into Leksa’s lap and cuddles back into her ‘Nono’, seeking and offering comfort both at once. Klark leans in to stroke their daughter’s hair and rests her chin on the ball of Leksa’s shoulder.

“You doing okay, babe?” Klark’s voice is soft, her breath is warm in Leksa’s ear. Leksa feels the muscles in her shoulders and back uncoil a little. Klark is here, loving her, raising their family with her. The story she’s listening to is growing unpleasant and uncomfortable despite the respect and reverence in the elders' voices as they recount the tale, but after it is done, all will be well again.

So Leksa turns to nudge a kiss into Klark’s mouth and smiles weakly into it. “I’m fine, Klark. Are you okay?”

Klark sighs against her lips. The story turns to describe the war against the Maunon, and she feels Klark shudder as the elders recount with great clarity the bomb that dropped on TonDC and killed many hundreds of villagers, old and young. Leksa breathes a little easier when Klark inches closer. Their bodies pressed together, Onia’s little legs straddled across her own and Peter’s weight against one leg, with Wilou curled in his lap, provide so much comfort and reassurance. Klark twirls a strand of Onia’s hair around her fingers, and Leksa knows how hard hearing all this told again, as if it were a just a story, just a legend, is for her. She knows, because it’s hard for her too.

“You’re here. Our kids are here. Everything’s fine,” Klark whispers, her voice gaining a little strength with every assertion, “I’m fine.”

Leksa smiles. She leans her head on Klark’s and turns her attention back to the elders. And because the story ends with The Uniter’s death, Leksa can pretend that she’s hearing it for the first time, and that it happened to heroes from long ago. She’s able to comfort Onia in her lap, who squirms and turns to stare up at her, wide eyes a little wet and glimmering in the low light, with a pout twisted adorably on her lips.

“Nono?”

Klark chuckles tensely beside her, scrapes her thumb over their daughter’s cheek and loosens her arm around Leksa just long enough to allow Leksa to bend and press a kiss to her daughter’s head. She’d hoped that Onia wouldn’t understand, or that Onia would not make that connection.

“Here, Onia. Safe and sound. The Uniter’s story ended, but mine was just beginning.”

She’s not sure Onia completely understands that, but she cuddles into her Nomon’s arms and relaxes into her anyway. Peter turns to look up at her too, careful not to disturb Wilou on his lap. “Did you really die, Lexa?”

His back against her legs are tense. He is only her second, but he looks to Leksa like she is his big sister, and Leksa and Klark both consider him part of the family. He knows this story too, though he was only an infant himself when it unfolded, and knows how it ends. He does not need the same assurances Onia did, but Leksa toes his back firmly and scruffs his hair. “En Trigedasleng, skat,” Leksa reminds him, sharply, but Peter looks only slightly abashed and continues to stare up at her for an answer. Leksa sighs, “Sha, ai wan op, en keryon heda gon we.”

“But you came back?” he replies almost instantly, earning a few grumblings and shushings from the others gathered around to hear the rest of the story.

Leksa ignores everyone but her family, and raises an eyebrow at Peter. Peter makes a face, and asks again in halting Trigedasleng, “ba kik yu thru?”

“Sha, skat,” Leksa smiles a little reassuringly at him, and he looks up at her for a moment longer, as if to remind himself that she is still there, and turns back around. He leans heavily on her legs for the rest of the night, and if the steel of her brace digging into his shoulder bothers him, he doesn’t seem to mind.

Klark is still tense beside her, and Leksa knows she’s not listening anymore. She can feel Klark’s teeth over her shoulder, close to the mating marks that scar her neck. Klark’s arms around her are tight. This part of the story, Leksa knows, is especially difficult for Klark to hear. She found the thousands of pictures Klark drew of her in the six years Klark believed her dead, and as beautiful as they were, Klark refused to hang or frame them like she does with her newer drawings of their daughters and each other together.

“Klark,” Leksa whispers softly to her mate. Klark growls softly, her arms tighten, her teeth bite bruisingly into her skin. Onia shifts in Leksa’s lap, puts a hand on Klark’s thigh, and Klark finally releases her teeth from Leksa’s shoulder. She nuzzles into it instead, peppers kisses where she knows her bite left marks, and sighs heavily.

“Mine,” Klark’s whisper is a little thick, and a little heavy. But when she finally looks up to meet Leksa’s gaze, she smiles a little and Leksa knows she’s okay.

 

* * *

 

Their third child is born almost exactly a year later. It’s hot and sticky in this particular hallway of the Ark Hospital, though that is probably due to the large crowd of people leaning against the walls or sitting on the floor waiting to hear news of Lexa and the new baby.

Clarke paces at the door irritably, hands clasped behind her back and her head and shoulders bowed while her mind cycles through all the worst case scenarios and tries to quash each one. Lexa has gone into labor early, and Abby has never kicked her out of the room before. Her heart is thrumming so painfully in her chest now, Clarke thinks it might just explode.

Anya is cuddled up beside Peter, right next to the door through which they all strain to hear something, anything, but can’t. She is pale-faced, and looks smaller than usual curled under Peter’s broadening shoulders. She stares up at Clarke worriedly, she knows her baby brother is supposed to be born now, but she doesn’t know what that means, except that when they go inside, he’ll be there. But she also knows that something has gone wrong, and everyone is scared. Clarke stares back down at her eldest daughter for a long, tense minute, before bending to pull the little girl into her arms and tuck Anya’s face into the crook of her neck.

Willow is occupied in Raven’s lap. She doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation, and seems to only know that everyone is nervous. She plays with Raven’s hair, babbles softly to herself, and Clarke envies her daughter’s ability to escape into fantasy whenever the mood hits. Raven strokes a hand over the two-year-old’s back and smiles tensely up at Clarke. It’s meant to be a comforting smile, but Clarke is well beyond that. All that will comfort Clarke now is holding her mate in her arms and seeing her baby boy feed at her breast.

Bellamy and Echo, Monty and Miller, Wick, Kane, Octavia, Lincoln, all their extended family is here for them. Clarke prays that when the door finally opens, she will have a glowing mate and a healthy son to show off to them. She prays that her mother comes through for her one more time, that the world doesn’t collapse around her ears again, that, when her mother finally opens the door, she is smiling through her exhaustion and that everything will be okay.

She hears a soft, muffled cry beyond the door. There is the sound of quiet talking, but the voices are too muted for Clarke to distinguish. Anya squirms in Clarke’s arms and tugs at her hair to get her attention.

“Are they almost done?” She has Lexa’s voice, and is developing Lexa’s precision with vowels and consonants and words, and Clarke’s heart breaks a little for the anxiety in her daughter’s whisper.

“I think so, sweetheart,” Clarke whispers back, and cuddles Anya a little closer to her. She presses a long kiss into her daughter’s curly hair and strokes her fingers through it gently, “I think I heard your baby brother in there. Did you hear him?”

Anya relaxes a little against her and nods slightly.

Then the door opens a crack. Clarke sucks in a sharp breath, her whole body feels like it is coiling with tightly contained tension, and looks up to find her mother’s dark eyes immediately. Abby looks exhausted, but the minute their eyes meet, she smiles. Clarke feels every muscle in her body relax, feels the air whoosh out of her lungs and past her lips in a single breath, and feels Anya melt in relief against her chest.

“Just you and the girls right now,” Abby’s voice is rough and cracked, but she’s still smiling and Clarke knows her mate and her son are just fine because Abby wouldn’t invite her granddaughters in if they weren’t. Clarke turns only to take Willow from Raven into her other arm, and with a daughter balanced on each hip, hurries in past Abby.

It’s a little dark inside, and it smells strongly of Lexa’s scent before they were mated. Like earth and bark and growing things. It smells of forests too, and without ever seeing her son, Clarke can distinguish his scent from theirs and loves it. She creeps to her mate’s bed and allows both daughters to squirm from her arms to cuddle into their Nomon on either side. For now, Clarke is fully focused on the wet green eyes staring up at her. She’s fully focused on the small smile trembling on her mate’s lips. She’s enraptured by the glow of sweat and the ruddiness of exertion on her tired face.

“Klark,” Lexa whispers, her voice faded and raspy, but still exact and clicking over the consonants. Clarke melts at the sound, a soft sob breaks loose from her chest, and she wraps an arm around her mate’s shoulders, leans in and presses kisses into Lexa’s hair. “Klark, meet your son,” there’s a smile in Lexa’s words, though they sound a little choked, and Clarke allows her mate to take one hand and guide it to the tiny bundle at her chest. “Meet Jeik.”

He is smaller than Anya and Willow were when they were born. His skin is dark, a small tuft of fine blonde hair curls across his forehead. Huge dark eyes stare up at Clarke, though he has his little mouth wrapped around Lexa’s nipple already and is drinking his first meal down greedily.

He’s beautiful. He’s perfect. He has already wormed his way deep into both his sisters’ hearts and Clarke feels an overwhelming joy steal over her and suck all the air from her lungs and all the strength in her knees. She pulls herself onto the hospital bed beside her mate before she has a chance to completely crumble, and bends over her baby boy.

He smells like earth. He smells rich, deep shadows and warm life and the sticky, sweet sap of trees. His tiny hand detaches from Lexa’s breast to cling to Clarke’s cheek and Clarke knows she’s been blessed by their third tiny little miracle. She wishes her father was here to meet his namesake, but she thinks she sees him in her son’s brown eyes. “Jake,” Clarke breathes softly into her son’s hand, and settles her cheek over Lexa’s collarbone, so she can feel her mate’s warmth and memorize every feature of her son’s face and hold her family all at once. Anya’s hand is clasped in hers, Willow’s chin is balanced over it. Lexa strokes her fingers through Clarke’s hair and dozes. Abby watches from the shadows, and Clarke can feel her mother’s eyes on them.

Before she drifts off to sleep enveloped by her family, Clarke thinks that everything, everything she’s lived through is worth it to be here in her mate’s arms, with their two daughters and their son curled into bed beside them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Trigedasleng isn't great, but here are rough translations:  
> Nomon - mother  
> Goufa/yongon - child  
> Skat - boy  
> Sha, ai wan op, en keryon heda gon we - Yes, I died, and the Commander Spirit left me  
> Ba kik yu thru - but you survived
> 
> So I'm still working on my next Clexa fic for you all. It will be A/B/O, with Alpha!Clarke and Omega!Lexa. It will also be an AU, and I am planning on it being longer than this one. I can't project yet when I'll start posting, I like to have a good buffer of chapters in case life gets in the way, so that you get your chapters as scheduled. 
> 
> In the meantime, though, if there's anything in particular you'd like to see, send me a prompt! I'd love to write up some one-shots to help you through the wait! A guest a few chapters back requested g!pLexa, so you might get a fun little smut one-shot of that in the next couple of days.


	11. In Light of Episode 307

I was going to put this question to Tumblr, but I think this is a better way to reach you, my readers. 

 

I'm not okay with how episode 307 ended. I will never be okay with how episode 307 ended. I want to fix it. I have an idea running around in my head for how to do that, but before I start on it, I want to pose this question to you: how would you feel about literally undoing the whole damn thing?

 

I do mean that quite literally. As in time-travel literally. As in science I'm not going to explain yet happens and Clarke finds herself tripping backward in time until three months have been undone and she's standing outside  _Camp Jaha_ with Bellamy watching their people hobble in after the genocide at Mount Weather. Camp Jaha, because it's not Arkadia yet. Clarke will remember, but she will have time and knowledge now to divert the future and save Lexa.

 

I have basic plot lines and thoughts mapped out in my head. It won't be  _just_ romance,  _just_ fluff,  _just_ anything (although there will be plenty of romance, fluff, angst and, of course, smut) - it will be a lot like re-writing the season. It will also not be a/b/o, it will be the universe as it is, but with a hiccup in time.

 

I know there's a lot of hurt and a lot of anger going around now. As a fanfic writer, I feel like I have a responsibility toward you all, to help pick you up now that we've fallen. This is a sensitive, painful topic for all of us, and I want to make sure that my version of a remedy is one that will help you heal, because this matters and you matter.

 

I'm still learning how to use tumblr, but you can find me at seraferosa.tumblr.com, I think? If the premise for this story sounds like something you want, and you'd like me to keep you updated on how it's coming along, come find me on tumblr. Bother me with messages and asks. I've been part of a lot of fandoms, but this is easily the kindest, funniest, warmest and most welcoming one I've ever had the pleasure of being part of, and I don't want to lose that or any of you.

 

Ste yuj, Clexakru. Oso gonplei nou ste odon nowe.

-Serafaerosa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys will never cease to amaze me. Wow, what a response.
> 
> It's settled. The Hurricane's already on board to beta. I'll try to have the first chapter up in the next couple of weeks.
> 
> Also, just to clarify, this will NOT be an a/b/o fic. I know some fans get squicked out by it, and I want this fic to be as accessible to as many people as possible. I am still planning on writing a/b/o shorts, and that a/b/o multichap is still in the works, but I am making this fic my priority.


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